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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Remote internet access via cellphone
  • Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 08:43:29 -0800 (PST)

I don't know if this twechnology for people in remote places in the third
world will be a helpful homestead application for remote areas. It sounds
like it might be similar to what Marie uses, I still don't know how a person
types and read emails or searches the internet on a phone, but I suppose they
do..............................................

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DECEMBER 5, 2008 Poorer Nations Go Online on Cellphones


JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Using cellphones to surf the Internet is booming in
emerging markets, showing how countries with poor fixed-line
telecommunications have become important drivers of growth for
mobile-technology companies.

Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian maker of Internet browsers for mobile
devices, says its strongest customer growth is in places like Indonesia,
Egypt and Russia. AdMob Inc., a San Francisco company that sends five billion
ads to Internet-enabled mobile handsets each month, says Asia overtook North
America in October as its largest regional market. Indonesia, Southeast
Asia's largest economy, is the company's second-biggest market after the
U.S., accounting for a quarter of its global ad traffic.

"For a lot of people in emerging markets, the mobile phone will be the
primary way of accessing the Internet," says Tony Cripps, a London-based
wireless-software analyst at Ovum, a technology consulting company owned by
Datamonitor PLC.

Indonesia is a nation of more than 17,000 islands, with many areas lacking
high-speed cable broadband connections, DSL lines or even regular phone lines
for dial-up service. Many people have turned instead to accessing the
Internet with their mobile phone in the past year as falling costs, increased
bandwidths and improvements in browser technology have made it quicker to
surf from a cellphone. For many, browsing on a handheld device is a cheaper
alternative to buying a PC or paying for home Internet service.

Anita Rachman, a 23-year-old secretary in Jakarta last year began surfing
social-networking sites like Friendster and checking Internet-based email on
her midrange Sony-Ericsson phone. Her bill: $25 a month, about the same as a
home Internet connection. "And I'm literally online 24/7," Ms. Rachman said.

Djohansyah Saleh, a public-relations executive at a Jakarta-based company,
says wireless connection speeds have improved markedly in the past year,
making mobile Internet faster than many land-line connections. "The mobile
Internet service is better now," he says.

Wireless-network operators and handset manufacturers like Nokia Corp., the
world's largest by sales, have long viewed emerging nations as crucial for
growth. Now, the evolving use of phones for data transfer -- not just calls
-- means mobile-technology firms can increase revenues per subscriber, which
are much lower than in the developed world, analysts say.

Already, Asia is leading the way in mobile data, analysts say. China Mobile
Ltd., Asia's leading wireless carrier by subscribers, made 25% of total
revenues from mobile data in 2007, according to a Morgan Stanley report
earlier this year. In comparison, for AT&T Corp., the U.S.'s largest
operator, the share was 18%.

In developed markets, the focus is on so-called smartphones, high-end
handsets like Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which cost hundreds of dollars and have
browsers with functions similar to PCs, including video and advanced
graphics. But in poorer nations, many consumers want to use phones that cost
around $100 to do tasks such as accessing email and social-networking sites.

The growing demand is an opportunity for developers of popular mobile Web
browsers like Opera, Purple Labs SA of France, which recently acquired
Openwave Systems Inc.'s browser business, and Japan's Access Co.

Until recently, Web browsers on a cellphone generally have been slow and
difficult to navigate. But the latest technology, which compresses files via
servers before sending them to the handheld device, allows quicker Internet
access.

The global market for desktop browsers remains much larger than for mobile
versions. Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer has a 71% share of the total
browser market, followed by Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox with 20% and Apple's
Safari at 7%, according to Net Applications, a California-based Web
statistics firm.

But the mobile-browser market is surging. High-performance browsers on
cellphones globally are expected to jump to 700 million by 2013 from 76
million last year.

Annual revenues to browser makers from handset manufacturers for the
installation of mobile browsers on cellphones are estimated to reach $492
million by 2013, says ABI Research, a market-research company. The
mobile-browser market will likely generate more than that as companies also
collect fees from tie-ups with search engines and for offering data support
to network operators, analysts say.

Opera says it has 21 million active users of its Opera Mini web browser, a
free product it launched in 2005 with emerging markets in mind; some 200,000
people download the software daily. When a user requests an Internet page
through Opera Mini, it is sent via a server in Norway, which shrinks the data
by 90%, reducing costs and making it easier to surf on cheap handsets. "It
was designed to get on all low-end phones," says Rolf Assev, Norway-based
chief strategy officer at Opera. "We expect this market to really take off."

The product has opened the Internet to many Indonesians who can't afford a
$1,000 laptop, says Hendra Kendro, who runs a technology consulting firm in
Jakarta. He says the commodities boom has raised incomes among people in
remote areas, and many are using mobile phones to download entertainment like
games and to visit gambling and social sites.

—Yayu Yuniar contributed to this article.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122844530354182063.html






  • [Homestead] Remote internet access via cellphone, bob ford, 12/05/2008

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