Pedal Powered Mobile Call Shop in Nicaragua

In Nicaragua people make national and international phone calls every day in call shops using their cell phones as address books instead of cell phones, although this may seem inconvenient to some the savings is worth it to many.

In many towns in the developing world a popular and inexpensive form of reaching people is the bicycle, it is used as a taxi, to move cargo and even to sell ice cream. We thought it was time to give the bicycle a bit of an upgrade by bringing the cost savings of a call shop to the people using the same familiar bicycle they use for transportation. We call it Llamadas Pedaleadas or Pedaled Phone Calls.

The one essential thing that a cell phone has that a call shop doesn't is a battery, so using parts found in a junk yard we created a constantly recharging battery by pedal power. Electricity is generated as the person is traveling to his destination, if the battery runs low at the destination he can drop the kick stand and start cycling in place. Generating electricity from pedaling allows us to travel to the central park, a remote town or a big festival increasing access to inexpensive telephony anywhere.

Because this bike is built for the developing world we had to use parts that could be easily found. To generate the electricity we used an old car alternator that sends the electricity generated to a car battery. The electricity stored in the battery is accessed by an old computer UPS to convert the electricity to 110V.