Internet calling

There is a poster in the third floor bathroom of Tutto Bene, one of those kitsch Mao-era jobs. It encourages people to support the modernisation and industrialisation of agriculture. I read it every time I go in there to pee. For some reason, the exhortation and the lady’s cheery face catches and holds my attention every time. I must have read the poster fifty times.

SciDev.Net reports on researchers who’ve built a system where farmers can access the Internet via key presses on their normal telephones.

For example, a farmer wanting to know the market price for wheat would press 1 on their keypad for grain, then press 2 for wheat, and then press 1 again to access the Ministry of Agriculture’s national agricultural exchange website. By pressing 1 again, the farmer would be able to find out the current price of wheat.

The challenge is to get farmers to install telephone lines; “The telecom company, for which the fact that rural telephones are rarely used is a problem, offered a discount on telephone lines.”

What a capital idea.

• 19 Nov 2004