U.K. startup Movirtu has announced plans to help 3 million or more people in developing countries gain access to mobile services by giving them personal phone numbers – not phones. Movirtu plans to work with a U.N.-affiliated initiative called Business Call to Action (BCTA) to offer the numbers which will be called “mobile identities”.

The service will be called Cloud Phone and will be offered through commercial carriers in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. The name Cloud Phone should not be confused with cloud computing which operates through the internet.

Movirtu is aiming to get 3 million people to use their mobile service for the pilot phase. Movirtu expects about 75 percent of its users to be women, because women in Africa and South Asia are statistically far less likely than men to have their own phones according to Ramona Liberoff, executive vice president of marketing at Movirtu.

The pilot phase will take place in Madagascar through the carrier Airtel. “Madagascar is a perfect market for Movirtu, because Airtel has built an extensive network but many people in the country can’t afford to buy a phone,” Liberoff said.

Owning a mobile identity as opposed to owning a personal mobile phone can save money for the users. For those living at poverty levels, affording a mobile phone may be impossible. A mobile identity allows users to use mobile services without having to purchase a phone.

Also, according to Liberoff, “the cost of prepaid service from a carrier typically is less than what consumers in those countries pay someone to borrow a phone. The average savings from using regular prepaid service instead is estimated at about $60 per year.”

Users can get a mobile identity by going to one of the mobile carrier’s shops. When the user wishes to borrow a mobile phone, the user enters a shortcode for the Movirtu service and then punches in their individual phone number and a personal identification number.

After that, the temporary user can access all the services available through the phone, as well as a personal carrier home page where they can manage and replenish their prepaid account. The system works on any GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone, using USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), a GSM protocol for communicating with a service provider’s computers.

Following the pilot in Madagascar, Movirtu plans to open up the Cloud Phone service in at least 12 markets in Africa and South Asia by early 2013, reaching at least 50 million potential users. “The two regions were chosen because they are home to about 1 billion of the 1.3 billion people in the world who rely on borrowed phones,” Liberoff said.

If successful, these mobile identities will allow mobile services to be physically and financially accessible to the poorest of the poor. This will greatly benefit aid parties since according to Liberoff, “In many cases, there are great NGO programs that can’t reach 80 percent of their base because those people don’t have their own phones.”

The overall goal with Cloud Phone should be to bring the impoverished out of poverty by giving them access to a brand new set of tools.

Giving rural populations and women access to mobile services will empower them, and get them involved economically and socially. It will enable them to enter a mobile world which billions of others have already tapped into, opening up many opportunities for development.