first part of this paper I examine the relationship between the phone and income generation in terms that would address the concerns of economists, and the established questions of organisations such as DFID. I hope, however, that by the end of the paper we have also approached the deeper issue of how to evaluate communication in its own right. THE RAPID UPTAKE OF MOBILE PHONES IN JAMAICA Initial research on the impact of the mobile phone on a regional basis has indeed already suggested a wide range of differences related to local patterns of usage (Katz and Aakhus 2002). That this is true even within the Caribbean, is evident from the contrast between Jamaica and Trinidad (Miller and Slater 2000),. Trinidad's population is approximately half that of Jamaica's 2.6 million (Cf. Henry 2004) but nearly three times its per capita income in 2003, $US 7,260 as compared to Jamaica's $US 2,760 (World Bank 2004). The ethnography of internet usage in Trinidad demonstrated great enthusiasm for the Internet in 1999, accompanied by considerable sharing of access, while our study of Jamaica in 2004 revealed much less interest, and indeed sharing of internet resources. While government statistics suggest 7% penetration of the internet in Trinidad and 3% for Jamaica [ii] , our evidence is that the actual usage is considerably greater in Trinidad (Henry 2004). With respect to the use of mobile phones there were also clear differences, but in the opposite direction. By the end of 2004 Trinidad had approximately 600,000