“A message oriented phone system for low cost connectivity”
I stumbled on a paper by R.J. Honicky, et al., called “A message oriented phone system for low cost connectivity” when I was on Nathan Eagle’s publication page. Nathan Eagle is the PI for EPROM.
This paper excited me because it’s about an idea for a voice message based system for people living in developing countries. The system it proposes is much more concerned with hardware and infrastructure than my Pigeon idea, but it a great point for helping me to continue generating questions about communication in developing countires and to begin more academic research.
I had been thinking about Pigeon more in terms of international calling, but domestic use could be useful also. As I’ve been talking to people about mobile phone use in Belize, there are still hoops people will jump through to save their credit. Something that could help them save money and communicate more easily would have a good chance of being adopted.
The paper mentions how a voice message system would effectively put people on the grid who live in areas where there is no mobile coverage but travel often to areas with coverage. In this case, asynchronous communication may be beneficial since when a person will be avaliable is unknown. Honicky’s proposed system would allow people to record when they are unconnected and then to upload when they are in a connected area.
Entrepreneurial Programming and Resarch on Mobiles at MIT
Entrepreneurial Programming and Resarch on Mobiles (EPROM) at MIT works on education, research and entrepreneurship for mobile phone programming in East Africa.
In education, they have developed a variety of courses in mobile phone programming which are being taught in a variety of East African universities. They are training programmers and comuter scientists to generate localy useful mobile phone applications.
In research, students are developing applications that can be run from any GSM SIM card and can be used for medical data collection in the field, amongst others.
In entrepreneurship, the group runs a SMS bootcamp teaching how to launch SMS-based services and supports small mobile phone application-based services such as MoSoko, a SMS based Craigslist, and Airtime Banking, which transfers a certain amount of credit over a desired amount of time.
Channeling my inner Ira Glass
I’m beginning to do a few informal interviews with people I’ve got to know in San Ignacio. I’m focusing on international (/***edit 15 June) technologically facilitated communication. I’m interested in what people are doing now to communicate with those abroad, what specific problems they see, and how they could see things being easier and better for them. I’d appreciate any suggestions on questions you think could provoke interesting discussion or insights.
Rough questions to get me going in conversation (in no particular order):
- Do you own a cell phone?
- Do you have a land line?
- What phone do you use to call abroad?
- How often do you call the US or abroad?
- How often to you text (SMS) the US or abroad?
- Do you own a computer?
- Do you often us a computer?
- Do you use email?
- Do you use Hi5 or another social network?
- Do you contact people abroad with Hi5 or another network?
- How else do you contact people abroad?
- How long have you owned a cell phone?
- If you could either pay your cable bill or put credit on your cell phone, which would you choose?
- If you could either pay your land line bill or put credit on your cell phone which would you choose?
- How old are kids when they get their first mobile phone?
- When kids have a parent abroad, how do you think they communicate with them?
- Do you trust the phone company?
/***edit 15 June
- How do you generally communicate with people in Belize?
- Do you do anything to conserve your mobile credit?
/***edit 16 June
- Follow up “Why?” questions to all questions
New Blogs I’m Following
Better World By Design Conference
Brown is having a Better World By Design Conference November 7-9. Also, their Better X Design blog.
FrontlineSMS
FrontlineSMS is a easy to use SMS gateway designed for use by NGOs from kiwanja.net and its founder Ken Banks. Version 2 of the system just went live. The system certainly answer the problem of communication in developing nations.
Coverage: Discovery News, White African, 160 Characters,
The Kiwanja blog and their Social Mobile Facebook Group.
From a NYTimes article, 28 May 2008:
“Africa, where 29 percent of the population owns a cellphone, according to Gartner, is just one of several promising markets. In India, market penetration is 34 percent, well below the United States, at about 70 percent, and Western Europe, at more than 90 percent.”
Essentially, the room for mobile phone growth in emerging markets is huge, not to mention the fact that these markets are huge in comparison to existing markets (the US, Western Europe). This is discussed and understood, but specific statistics are essential in making the argument of how creating an affordable communication system for those living in these markets can, beyond being extremely helpful to individual lives, be economically possible.
“an interesting thing happened today in my gchat window… low bandwidth or a message from God?”
via Filardi
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