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Young Entrepreneur Challenges the Way Americans Think About Their CellphonesA Pakistani immigrant takes on the U.S. cell phone service model.
ByGrant Davis•
Can you hear him now? GSM Nation's Ahmed Khattak.
Photo© Natalie Brasington
In the fall of 2004, when 18-year-old Pakistani squash champion Ahmed Khattak arrived at Yale to play for the university and take advantage of a full academic scholarship, his first priority was to buy a cell phone to call his family back home. But he couldn't. With no Social Security number and no established credit, he wasn't able to get a cell phone service contract.
"I couldn't believe it," he says. "I'd just arrived in the most technologically advanced country in the world, and no one would sell me a phone."
