Political Inclusion of Rural Populations over Non-data Basic Mobiles
A London based mobile technology company ONEm Communications Ltd. created a platform technology that lets any ordinary mobile over SMS and Voice to experience extraordinary interactive communication capabilities.
The internet has proven to be instrumental in informing people about political policy issues that affect their lives. Unfortunately this favors heavily cities and densely populated areas where mobile operators and ISP’s are more than willing to invest in the internet infrastructure.
People living in rural areas have less access and involvement in political policy decisions and information. As a result they may be making uninformed choices or not participate at all.
More than half of the population in African countries live in rural areas where mobile internet coverage is very poor. Because of cost, coverage and battery life the basic mobile is favored over internet enabled smartphones.
What if the rural voter could engage interactively with an internet-like service using their ordinary mobile without the need for the internet.
ONEm’s ecosystem works with the existing mobile infrastructure and mobiles to provide internet-like services that would allow any mobile to enjoy rich communications, content and services. Moreover, each user will have their own secure identity and space for their own content, profile and service settings.
Users could select and listen to informational audio podcasts, share them with other users and even post back their comments — all using just a basic mobile without the internet.
Governments and Political Parties can open a two-way interactive channels with their constituents. With this channel they can disseminate interactive information, provide services and gain valuable feedback to help in the decision making process.
The ONEm ecosystem can be used for official government information, census data collection, security alerts, commerce, economic programs and healthcare.
ONEm is keen to work with African governments to deploy its smart mobile technology.
