I've just returned from a holiday on the islands of Palawan in the Philippines.
We visited El Nido and Coron.
Both these places have very poor electricity supplies with regular brownouts (when sections of the town suddenly lose their electricity for several hours). Virtually every establishment runs a generator so they can stay in business during these times.
Wifi is everywhere and free and you can almost always find a connection.
On our last day, the complete banking system of Coron failed - the 3 ATMs in the town stopped working and businesses were unable to accept credit card payments. We were left with about $5 equivalent in cash and ate instant noodles before we made it out alive.
I had a computer and bitcoins - the situation was perfect for bitcoins if only businesses would accept it or money exchangers would exchange it. The economy would have been boosted becasue we would have been able to spend more and freely instead of watching out pesos dwindling away
Thanks for that.
Those businesses are prepared then for a power outage. Where power is relatively stable most businesses simply must close in the rare instances that power is out.
As far as exchangers it only takes a few in a large metro area to get things started. Right now the list of traders on LocalBitcoins is starting to grow -- globally. So, let's say there is a multi-day outage (for example, physical damage to multiple parts of electrical distribution infrastructure).
Basically starting just with those few who are already familiar with how bitcoin works, they could basically fast-track adoption of bitcoin. Simply print up (or have community print themselves) paper bitcoins from BitAddress.org -- then fund them with small denominations (e.g., $5s, $20s and a couple $100s.) Then work with a few key merchants to accept these paper bitcoins (scanning the QR codes to redeem the coins).
This handful of individuals wouldn't likely have many bitcoins themselves but many in the community would have relatives and businesses outside the affected area that could buy and send bitcoins to bitcoin addresses for the paper bitcoin wallets. These individuals then could facilitate exchange, providing fiat for those without smartphone mobiles or laptops.
The biggest barrier is that bitcoin isn't known to the merchants and exchangers and they wouldn't move very quickly towards this. But if this scenario were to occur some day, it will get some press as a novel solution -- digital currency to the rescue, and will be tried the next time it happens elsewhere, and will spread from there. Hopefully.
