Ringtones and More in Kabul
by Eaton Dunkelberger

I am a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and founder and president of Danebarf, a mobile phone content company in Afghanistan. We serve to increase information access to Afghans using the budding mobile phone market.

After graduating from London Business School in April 2006, I arrived in Kabul at an exciting time. It was just when the phone companies here started to look at offering value-added services like Short Message Service (SMS), text alerts, ringtones, and interactive TV products. I started Danebarf (Dari for snowflake) as one of the only mobile phone content companies in Afghanistan, to help bring its people to the technology age (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/22/01, "Laying the Groundwork for a New Afghanistan").

Here's a typical day in my life in Kabul:

4:15 a.m. The morning azan (call to prayer) beckons over the local mosque's loudspeaker. I close the window and go back to sleep but can hear the city begin to bustle.

7 a.m. The electricity is normally on by now, so I walk into the garden and connect to our wireless network to talk to my girlfriend and family on Skype (Kabul is 11.5 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time). I live in a house with two former British Army officers. They live and work here, running a private security company. I rent a room in the back. Most Kabul houses have high walls, wonderful rose gardens, and a friendly doorman.

7:45 a.m. My driver/translator, Nabil, picks me up and we head to a local restaurant, order egg-and-cheese burgers, and begin the one-hour daily Dari lesson at a table in the garden.

9 a.m. Meeting with Naseem. This young Afghan makes our ringtones and owns the only music production studio in Kabul. Naseem's office is on Butcher Street, the stairs to his office nestled between huge cow carcasses buzzing with flies. We sit on the floor, drink soda, and listen to the new tracks he's recording.

I offered Naseem a lucrative revenue sharing agreement in exchange for ringtone production, but as with many Afghans, a bird in the hand is worth three or four in the bush. After years of uncertainty...