i would say it is of maximal strategic value. knowing who calls who is the ultimate social graph. note the analytics news out of ibm re snazzy.
Reading HN today has paid off I see. That's a brilliant insight.
Most of the things I do are arranged by email/IM. We agree to go to someone's house at a particular time, and then we do so. I'd only call if I managed to get lost.
(The penetration numbers I've heard for gmail mean that college students do not use technology like anyone else. Then again, they're a pretty sweet marketing demographic...)
Communications methods that have a cost associated with them are used for more important stuff than those that are free.
When the telegraph was introduced it certainly wasn't wasted on trivialities, every word cost money.
The phone still costs money, even if the amount per word is so low that in practice it is also used for many trivial communications.
The cost of email and IM is so low that most of it is trivial, spam exists for that one reason only. If an email would cost you 25 cts then spam would be non-existent.
So the graph of who calls who probably has significant value, possibly more than who mails who or who IMs who.
imho, the us market will lead the way as a test bed for services of this nature to be rolled out globally.
Further, I would wager my parents' generation do much of this planning via word of mouth at church. This is highly anecdotal though.
(In any case, I think you overstate the set of people without computers but with cell phones from which reasonable social graphs can be generated. Some places cells are rare enough they are shared by a group of people...)
Also I was serious.
I never thought of the value that is inherent in knowing who calls who. That's the sort of gem that comes by here every now and then.
as to unique id's...