PARIS: It looks a bit like a child's toy, a walkie-talkie circa 1975, a cheap plastic throwback to the good old days when telephones were made for talking.

But to Spice Ltd., a telecommunications company in the world's fastest-growing phone market, this new product embodies the latest, greatest innovation in cellphone technology today: a handset priced at less than $20.

Spice, which is based in Noida, India, unveiled what it is branding "the People's Phone" at a wireless industry conference in Barcelona last month. The handset is an anomaly among mobile phones today: The number keys are big and bold. It is chunky and has no color screen - in fact, it has no screen at all. Nothing about it flips, folds or slides. It is, as Spice's chairman, Bhupendra Kumar Modi, described it, "just a phone."