Mobile Service Leapfrogging The Internet

from the unintended-consequences... dept

While there are plenty of stories about how mobile phone service in developing countries is useful for "leapfrogging" traditional phone service, it's also clearly leapfrogging the internet in many areas. Take, for example, this story about how Kenyans are using phones and text messaging to find jobs. They compare the system to the regular internet, which is slow, unreliable, and often difficult to get to -- as the nearest computer may be far away. But the more ubiquitous mobile phone connections mean that small groups of people can share a single phone -- and employers can send out notices of open jobs. It gets the information out faster and more reliably than using the internet. While some uses of mobile data seem silly in places where computers and internet connections are reliable and easily accessible, they can obviously make much more sense under these other circumstances.

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