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Tag Archives: mobile phone
Digital Generation in Papua New Guinea Emerges
Memo #194 – Next month, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr will make his maiden visit to Papua New Guinea (PNG), Australia’s nearest neighbour and second largest recipient of Australian foreign aid. This visit comes 10 months after the then brand-new foreign minister threatened PNG with sanctions following suggestions from within the PNG government that national elections might be delayed. Not surprisingly, these threats did not go down well with Papua New Guineans. But ironically, Foreign Minister Carr can take partial responsibility for inspiring a new, digital generation of Papua New Guineans to engage in public discussion. Continue reading
Posted in Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea
Tagged foreign aid, foreign policy, mobile, mobile phone, political change, social change, social media, telecom
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Pocket Social Networking in India – SMS GupShup Expands
Memo #190 – The communication revolution has spread to small towns and even villages in India through a Twitter-like Small Message Service (SMS) social marketing networking alternative called GupShup. The low-cost text messaging service for phone, web, or mobile communication facilitates “pocket social networking” for people without smart phones. It is estimated to currently process two billion messages per month in India, compared to 480 million a year ago. Continue reading
Why Technology Needs People: Gold, Phones, and Bicycles
Memo # 177 – “We treated our precinct captains like gold,” wrote David Plouffe, an architect of President Obama’s 2008 US election campaign. “The challenge” lay in “marrying digital technology and strategy with a strong grassroots campaign.”
Plouffe’s insights had been anticipated a year earlier in an election in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, where a party led by a Dalit (former untouchable) woman won unexpectedly. And the story about the centrality of technology and people came full circle early in 2012 when Uttar Pradesh voted to throw out the incumbent government. Continue reading
Posted in India
Tagged communications, development, economics, election, history, mobile, mobile phone, politics, telecom, voting
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China Crucial to India’s Mobile Revolution
Memo #172 – India entered the elite global club of $1 trillion-plus (USD) economies in the last decade accompanied by explosive growth in domestic mobile phone users. India had the second largest population of mobile phone users as of 2010, an astounding leap from their modest rank of 34th ten years earlier. Continue reading
Posted in China, India
Tagged development, economics, mobile, mobile phone, telecom, trade
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