India. Election queries by SMS – quotes textually.org from an article in The Telegraph, Those hunting for their names on the electoral rolls or clueless about their polling station can get all the information by sending a message from cellphones to a designated number when the next round of revision of electoral rolls takes place in September.
My first thought is, this opens up a whole new world of rigging and booth-capturing techniques, but then pessimism never got me anywhere… The most important benefit of the SMS query system is that it will save voters a lot of time. They don’t have to go to local offices to check the electoral list. It is expected to be accepted well chiefly because of its simplicity.
In another article, agencyfaqs quotes Maran – Low-cost handset to spur new wave of mobile telephony – BPL Mobile will introduce a low-priced handset package next week. The package, at a price of Rs 1,499, aims to reduce the entry barrier for new customers.
Yesterday, Dina was talking about some villages she visited in UP recently which did not have even basic facilities like electricity or telephone lines, but they had a few mobile phones each… Will such a low cost mobile package lead to a new communication revolution in rural India – mobile phone kiosks as the STD-booth equivalent?
Read also, Villages may get Net, telephony on cable from the Business Standard. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is planning a convergence of voice data services. It is expected to send a proposal to the government for allowing cable operators in rural areas to offer basic telephony and Internet services.
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has launched something called the Village Telephone scheme to connect remote villages. See here:
http://www.grameen-info.org/grameen/gtelecom/
Thanks for the link, gautam – very interesting – but I keep wondering about how successful these schemes actually are – for instance, in this case, their website says – “Our desire is to install 40,000 village phones by the year 2004” – any follow-ups? any idea of what they have achieved – that would be interesting to know…. I know in india too there have been plans to open mobile phone kiosks – in a similar model, but have no clue what is happening on that front now…