About time to unleash these services ... Developed by HIVSA, Funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation
South Africa Only
USSD App = *120*6336#
SMS hi to 43751
Mama.mobi (For pregnant women and new mums)
Papa.mobi (for Dads)
Baby.mobi (Baby health care)
Translations coming in 2012... Zulu, Sotho, Affrikaans, Tsonga ...
Other services coming in 2012 .. Voice Lines/Audio content, Mxit Application
Future roadmap .. Games, Mobile video
For the cellphone information services we are developing, in South Africa, we are looking at branding issues and domain names(the name of your website). Of course a name must be short and catchy and it would certainly help if it was easy to enter on a cellphone. We have looked at various options but as we are virtually exclusively promoting mobile phone focused content we have decided to use dot mobi domain names.
The dot mobi name was set up exclusively for mobile internet content; The dot mobi name is easy to explain as "for mobile". Howver many internet commentators consider dot mobi to be a worthless domain extension with no major sites using it, no type in traffic and poor public recognicition. Those commentators have a point - after all when you look at the world's biggest websites, all are dot com and nearly all use m.<name>.com for their mobile site. However, South Africa seems to be a unique place where dot mobi is actually is used as it was intended and is publically advertised - See who is actively using it: -
A few other well known sites/brands you may recognise if you live in south africa
kalahari.mobi (largest online retailer in SA)
takealot.mobi (Large online retailer)
pprop.mobi (Private Property - largest property sales website)
mweb.mobi (the largest ISP in south africa)
8ta.mobi (Mobile network operator)
mxit.mobi (Largest mobile social network in South Africa)
sterkinekor.mobi (Largest cinema chain in South Africa)
motribe.mobi (Cape Town Based Mobile social network)
computicket.mobi (online ticket monopoly)
kulula.mobi (major local airline)
shopritesa.mobi (Shoprite - Supermarket chain)
makrosa.mobi (Makro - Large retailer)
edgars.mobi (Large retailer)
truworths.mobi (Large retailer)
pepcell.mobi (PEP Stores celluar offers)
peptxt.mobi (PEP stores chat application)
soccerladuma.mobi (major local football site)
sabcnews.mobi (the national broadcaster)
dailysun.mobi (largest daily newspaper)
ewn.mobi (Eye Witness News)
highveld.mobi (johannesburg radio station)
goodhopefm.mobi (cape town radion station)
itweb.mobi (Mobile version of one of the biggest local IT sites)
www.gautrain.mobi (Gautrain)
cttrains.mobi (Cape Town trains)
brabys.mobi (Business directory)
mbendi.mobi (Business directory)
go2uj.mobi (University of Johannesburg)
openvarsity.mobi (Televised educational programmes)
sharenet.mobi (stockmarket information)
Cellphones & Interactivity!
Good news indeed - Next month I'll be getting started with Skhokho - So Lwazi - (see my previous post) thanks to backing from Elton John AIDS Foundation. Here's a bit of the press release sent out earlier: -
HIVSA together with the Elton John AIDS Foundation, will develop a new cellphone service, available any time, anywhere and in a number of local languages, that will allow South African women and their partners access to relevant, up-to-date and health information around HIV, pregnancy and baby health.
"Over 75% of adults in South Africa own a cell phone and more have access to one. This fact alone should fundamentally change the way we think about delivering health information and education," explains Rob Allen, HIVSA's Technology Development manager. "There are many advantages in using cell phone technologies, including cost, reach, the ease of managing updates and of course the information is no longer just 'push or pull' but can also be interactive."South Africa has a very high incidence of maternal and infant deaths. In South Africa 48 infants in 1 000 die in their first year (compared to only five in the UK). One of the main reasons for death is attributed to HIV and AIDS, even though there are services and drugs available that can prevent a mother from passing HIV on to her baby (PMTCT) – in many cases these services are not taken up due to poor delivery and or it is due to women not fully understanding what services are available to them. The key objective of this project is to allow women to empower themselves with information so they can make well-informed decisions around their (and their baby's) health - especially with respect to HIV.The SKHOKHO – SO LWAZI project will include a SMS messaging service, interactive voice lines, mobile web sites and will develop applications linking into the popular Mxit Network. All of these services will be backed by a social marketing drive initially targeting three districts, namely Soweto in Gauteng, Ehlanzeni in Mpumalanga and Mopani in Limpopo. The project will initially collaborate with local NGOs, clinics and hospitals in these districts in order to identify how these services impact on health outcomes.For further information, contact Rob Allen on 011 494 1900 or email allenr@hivsa.comAlternatively leave a question or comment here or connect with me on Twitter @roballen101
This post is very much a follow up to my "Zero Rate my Data" and "Data Costs Matter" posts in which I have tried to explain why free (to user) mobile Internet could have a hugely positive impact upon development.
For this example I take Khomanani - this was the "flagship" HIV/AIDS awareness and education campaign in South Africa. In 2007 a company won a tender to run it for 4 years - got R190 million - and had so little impact that many people were calling for a forensic audit (http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20032746).
Now consider that we now had an interactive mobile website/j2me application that was made freely available and advertised well but through cellphone texts mainly. We make sure that the information is presented well and branded and that we cover different languages and have downloadable audio files.Imagine if reverse billing for data (free to the user - the service provider pays) was now available (I believe that around R200 per GB would be a resonable charge that the mobile operators could charge initially).
Because this will be an advertised, free and very useful service available to people on their cellphones we may get as many as 10 million people accessing 1mb of data through the year. They would consume 10TB(Terrabytes) of information and education service and we would pay the mobile operators R2 million. Even adding on R5 Million for supporting project, media development and advertising costs and we still could run a scaled and unprecedently effective information service for R7 million a year - thats 15% of what it costs to run a Khomanani - that cannot even produce a report to say what it has done(if anything).
Now imagine if we have this for TB, Other chronic illnesses, Pregnancy and baby care, wellness campaigns and more - imagine the savings (And that's just health --- think about education!)Also in the future,So -
WIN-WIN-WIN
FAQs
What about people who don't have data enabled phones? - There is a significant increase in the percentage of phones that are data enabled each year. We should also encourage the phone recycling/donation schemes to focus upon data enabled phones as a minimum standard. In 5 years there is no reason why anyone in South Africa should not have some means of access to a data enabled phone.
What if we are less successful? - Only impact is that costs come down.
What if we are too successful - will the costs spiral out of control? - The additional costs are largely paid to the mobile phone operators so we would need to have a sliding scale of costs of bandwidth.
What about Denial of service attacks? - We would need systems to block/limit requesting IPs.
Other questions, thoughts?
Here's the agenda for an event I went to - #mHealth appears to be a topic everyone wants to get involved in.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deal with many of the most important issues of our time and have been agreed to by practically everyone. The final target- Target 8F states "In cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications" - this is quite wide ranging in some senses but the two biggest new information and communication technologies (the internet and the cellphone) are converging and as such "availability of the mobile internet must now be considered fundamentally central to this target".
This is possible! - to some extent Vodacom and the Praekelt foundation are doing this with the Young Africa Live service in South Africa and there is also Facebook Zero available in some countries. But these services are just a tiny fraction of what could be possible if we can get operators to allow for zero rated data services.
This does not mean that the mobile operators get stuck with the bill - because the data usage charges can be billed to the content provider, be it a Government, an NGO or a business that wants to make important information freely available. Because of this - zero-rated data services provide a WIN-WIN-WIN for the mobile operator, the service provider and the service user.
In itself this concept is worth advocating for just due to how well it deals with target 8F. However that is just the start of the potential developments wins that zero rated data services could impact upon; it would also have a profound impact on many of the other goals as detailed below.
I have been evangelising about the rise and significance of the mobile internet since 1999 when I managed to get my hands on one of the first available Nokia 7110 phones and started creating WAP sites - in the end the efforts came to nothing - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/24/wap_is_still_crap/ tells it like it was and interestingly also says “That's why a cell phone will never replace a PDA, and a PDA will never replace a phone." (what a difference 10 years makes). One thing that people forget is that WAP was also terribly expensive for what it was. 10 pence a minute for something that didn't load very quickly. Use it for 30 mins a day = nearly 100 pounds a month (over 1000 rand). Of course it failed.
Move forward to 2005 - there was cost per mb(instead of cost per minute) and a proliferation of java on phones. This meant that there was a compelling reason for people to use the mobile internet for something other than ringtones and wallpapers – it could save them money. By downloading a Java application (for example Mxit or Mig33) they could effectively message their friends for almost no cost at all. Of course these types of services became the first widely used mobile internet applications (outside of Japan). Devices like the RIM Blackberries also started to become popular due to the integration with email. In 2007, the iPhone woke a lot more people up to the ideas of a phone as a data device and Opera mini started to get some serious traction around making the internet available to people on any Java mobile phone(An important part of opera minis success is that it compresses the data to lower data costs).
From 2008 everything related to the internet on mobile devices has exploded and it is obvious that this technology will play an immense role in all of our lives in the future. In 2011 we have now reached the situation where over a billion people can access information at anytime, anywhere. Most people don't yet use this ability and many of the really important services (e.g. interactive educational resources tied to curriculums, interactive health resources linked to primary health care, 2-way citizen participation link to services) have yet to be realised. I believe these services will come and will empower people greatly in the future - the biggest obstacle I see is data costs.
Many of the people who could benefit most from the the new technology are at the base of the pyramid now. Many have, or are now getting, data/java enabled phones but they often have little or no airtime available. With data costs as they currently are this presents a problem for making important data services available to all; As a result data costs could considerably impact on potential development gains. In an ideal world the operators would co-operate and partner with governments and NGOs to provide a free data space for important information – The most progressive example of this is Young Africa Live by Vodacom and the Praekelt Foundation – However this is only one operator and one set of information and in the real world we cannoit expect operators to carry the cost.
What I propose for South Africa (And this could easily be taken as a model for other countries) is a non-profit WASP which would provide (first and foremost) reverse billed data charges (i.e. people can use the data service for free - zero rated and the site host pays the related data cost). Secondly the Non-Profit WASP should also handle: -
With this operation in place - one of the major obstacles for using cellphone based technologies for development will be overcome and all development goals will be easier to realise in the future.
Skhokho So Lwazi is a project I want to get funded through the organisation I work for (HIVSA) - in my view it's a fundamental part of how we should be using mobile technology in health.
This is a problem everywhere - free or low-cost information about important health issues should be made available in ways that people will be able to understand. This includes producing information in "home" languages and in ways that do not rely on strong literacy skills.
Yes - traditional information campaigns do have a place but compared to what we can do with mobile technology they are expensive and limited. This means we really should start at least integrating mobile tech into existing information and education campaigns.
Mobile tech is broad and there is no reason for us not to use a number of the tools at our disposal working together in an integrated fashion. Skhokho-so Lwazi envisages using the following tech as it is (in our opinion) the most cost effectiveand sustainable.
1. Someone sends an SMS to a premium shortcode and we use RapidSMS for sending a number of SMSs back. For a R2 code we have a system that can send up to 7 SMSs in response without incurring extra charges(Subject to at least 500 SMSs per month).
2. Interavtive voice response systems using Freedom Fone version 2. Use a freedom fone installation for each different language and cover 3 mobile networks to allow people to take advantage of cheap/sometimes free - own network to own network - calls.
3. Someone sends an "please call me" SMS to a cell number (Free to do in South Africa) and receives a wap push message containing a link to a mobisite containing the desired information.
4. Mxit is the most widely used mobile information portal in use in South Africa - The external API allows the creation of interactive information services.
Of course we should not work in isolation and there are existing programmes which any mobile information programme should look to linking too / building upon.
It is important to have a strong marketing plan for information and education campaigns and this is even more important when it comes to marketing a mobile campaign. People respond better to well branded products/services and supporting materials must be produced and "champions" trained. Also it should be noted that Radio is still the Number 1 mass media in South Africa. The freedom fone technology is an excellent extension for local radio.
Although Skhokho-So Lwazi utilises groundbreaking technology the approach is very much people oriented. All the content and branding must be developed using a participatory approach.
We like things to be simple - unfortunately many real world problems are like onions.
For example and often used:-
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime*(see notes 1 to 8)
Of course you could add notes around the mans family, his community, his psychosocial issues and needs and more but the example illustrates the point. Don't ever think that one simple thing will solve a real world issue and many people just don't grasp this.
