Ken Banks at the Mobile World Congress

sokari's picture

Ken Banks, founder of Frontline SMS and Kiwanja.net is attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Ken is the kind of guy that always manages to find or build something special around mobile phone technology wherever he goes. On this occasion he discovers a mobile phone without a screen. Whats the big deal?

Spice Mobile have launched what they are calling "The People's Phone" in India, and plan to roll it out in Europe by the summer. And it has no screen. At $20 it's billed as a device which promotes the power of the spoken word and is designed for illiterate or visually impaired users. It boasts voice
response technology, long battery life, a braille language keypad and a universal charger.

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Mobile World Congress

Hey Sokari Thanks for picking up on my post, and on my week in Barcelona! Although it's predominantly a commercial event, there's more and more interest in emerging markets/developing countries, and it was great to be able to meet up with people and talk about what's going on, particularly in Africa. I also met with a company who specialise in solar chargers, and hope to partner with them on some exciting projects in the near future (I'm also about to blog about this). I left with a $20 charging panel, which will charge up my $12 ZTE mobile purchased in Uganda recently. A phone and solar charger for $32? It's becoming affordable, for sure, and I expect to see a lot more activity in this area in the coming months. After all, there's no reason why an entrepreneur in a developing country couldn't get hold of a couple of these panels and run a business charging phones using solar (as some are doing with car batteries and grid power now - see http://www.blogspot.kiwanja.net/2008/02/charging-challenge.html). More soon. Ken P.S. Congratulations on the new Kabissa site! Great work...

Net2ThinkTank

Hi Sokari, I included your post in the Net2ThinkTank round up: http://tinyurl.com/yu53rp

I hope that is ok.

Britt Britt Bravo

• Community Builder NetSquared
• A Project of Tech Soup www.netsquared.org

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