Cell Phones Are Sweeping the World Technology Race

photo credit: Cell Phones Across the World

While the iPad and other pricey technology dictates to the US, the rest of the world is using and developing cell phones as the latest and CHEAPEST technology! In India, Reliance Communications sells a cell phone for $25 with -1 cent-a-minute phone calls across India and 1-cent text messages and no monthly charge.

Cell Phones Are Sweeping the World Technology Race

From India to Kenya to Colombia to South Africa, cell phones are sweeping the technology race. Many areas are using text messaging to sign up for job searches (especially where Internet isn’t readily available to everyone). In India, the cell phone is used in citizen election monitoring, and in equipping voters, via text message, with information on candidates’ incomes and criminal backgrounds.

In Africa, the cell phone is giving birth to a new paradigm in money. You can actually send money to a cell phone account instead of using Western Union. This comes from a rising problem of people not having bank accounts in Africa. This creates a peer-to-peer financing system, no longer dependent on banks or credit cards. Western Union doesn’t offer this service, but an American company, Obopay, does offer phone-to-phone payments. Its founder, Carol Realini, got the idea when volunteering in Africa.

When President Obama addressed the Muslim world last year, the White House sent out the speech in over 13 languages via text messaging. It has done no such thing in the US, where not everyone still has Internet connections. Does give you pause to wonder…

According to the International Telecommunication Union, a trade group, there will be over 5 BILLION cell phone subscribers this year. (See my blog “67% of all people on Earth use cell phones!”) That would mean more human beings today have access to a cell phone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet. I guess we must all have our priorities.

Is desire replacing need as the mother of invention in the US? Are we just so hot for the latest, greatest technology that we are skipping past some obviously cheaper ways of communicating? I am all for technology. In fact, my son just sent me a new Amazon Kindle for Mother’s Day. I love it for its convenience as well as the reduction of size and weight in my back pack. And I must confess to having a Smartphone so I can receive email and browse the Internet from anywhere. I guess I am part of the American push for technology and part of the problem and not the solution. So be it. What about you?