Michael Hart wrote:
So, what you are telling me is that the Philippines has moved from the half of the world without telephone service to the half that now has phone service.
Not exactly, as I don't have the figures. Just saying that phone coverage has come within reach of many more people, and has done so very quickly, and I believe the same trend is true in many countries. Cellphones are booming business all over Africa as well. Your 50% may, hopefully soon be history.
You can have pre-paid cards starting as low as 35 cents, and you can actually send even smaller amounts of load by text message. I single text message is 2 cents, and far more popular than actual phone calls, that are very expensive at 15 cents a minute.
However, you can probably get more communication done in that minute than in one text message and four replies, unless they let you send huge emails like some we've just been through.
Well, you and I can agree on that, but scarcity of money sometimes leads to uneconomical decisions. As anybody who has been in a developping country can tell by the tiny sachets of shampoo, soap, and other care products on sale in every corner. Never ask what they cost by the liter. In the mean time, the Filipinos send on average 1.5 message per day; that is over 100 million messages.
Yes, I just mentioned something similar in a separate note, we will probably have to pay for those $100 laptops and give away so many of them that they become so ubiquitous that people don't steal them.
Well, just like cell phones, such gadgets will remain a target for thieves. Personalize them, give them unique numbers that cannot be changed, and let them advertise where they are when switched on via WiFi, and you could fairly easy trace them back, just like cell-phones, if producers and providers would cooperate.
Sory, I must have missed something, couldn't you use computers just from the light from the monitors?
Ever tried to find the on switch in pitch dark? I love my wife's village in the middle of nowhere, as there is no light whatsoever to veil the stars. Jeroen.