Gmail - increasing the digital divide?

If you try singing up for new gmail account you may be asked to give your telephone number. Yes its mandatory to have a telephone to have a gmail account. Check out the FAQ google has put up.

May be the super intelligent rich google engineers have failed to realize that many poor people in third world nations dont have telephones and depend on gmail for all communication or they just dont give a dime for the third world. Whatever the reason, it seems the digital divide is just going to get a little bit bigger thanks to the great google and its policies which will no doubt be copied by most other free email serice providers.

The next discriminaotry step would probably be stopping gmail services to third world countries. After all why do the starving third worlders like us need finer things in life like email or blogging?