One of the projects competing for the cup mixes OLPC and FM radio to overcome at least one of the major connectivity hurdles faced by the OLPC initiative. Griffen’s complete post is at http://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2010/02/25/a-beeping-good-idea-for-low-cost-communication/

The idea is to leverage off the growing number of XO laptops available in third world countries as part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme which is active here in New Zealand where a network of testers including Sciblogger Fabiana Kubke help refine the low-cost computer’s features.

There are 1.2 million OLPC laptops now in use, but there remains a big problem – third world countries don’t really have the communications infrastructure to get content out to those laptops in a reliable fashion. Mobile networks often don’t extend into rural areas, satellite and fixed wireless systems are too expensive options. Team Beep came up with a great idea – why not use the readily available FM broadcast frequency to send out a stream of data that can be picked up by a bog standard FM radio. The signal is then fed into the sound card of the XO latop and recorded using a small piece of open source software. The software then converts the audio signal, which consists of a stream of beeps representing letters, into text and assembles it as a document.

Radiotext-type services using the FM network are not a new idea, here’s one project from Europe seeking to offer similar services and digital radio is already rolled out in many countries delivering weather, traffic and channel information to radio users. But the innovative part of One Beep’s solution is the interface between an FM radio and the XO laptops used as part of the OLPC programme. With some refinements, this should be a piece of software that cna be simple to use and allow children in remote villages in Africa to be sent school lessons updated regularly.

Currently, the data throughput One Beep is achieving is fairly low – 2Kbps (kilobits per second). But the team is confident compression technology can increase this to 10Kbps. I think they’d find others are working in this area who may be worth partnering with to get the data throughput possible via FM radio even higher.

This is a solution that could be rolled out tomorrow – it requires use of a small sliver of radio spectrum, a radio transmitter to send out the signal (the further it needs to go the more powerful the transmitter needs to be) and the software has to be installed on each OLPC machine. Hopefully the competition and One Beep’s making it to the final will give the project the profile it needs to become reality.

Joseph Sekiku of Tanzania’s

FADECO Community Radio is a local radio in NW Tanzania. Its programming is characterised with a strong focus on rural development (65%) with the rest of the air time distributed among 25% news and general information and entertainment (culture, history, arts) at 10%. Agriculture takes the lions share of our programming.

The main challenges for a rural community radio are related to information/ content generation, repackaging, dissemination and feedback (monitoring to see if the message are making any meaningful impact on the listeners). In order to address this challenge, FRC  100.8 FM has sought to use the available ICTs both for content generation and for getting a feed back from the farmers or listeners. And here is how it works at FADECO:

Information gathering/ content generation

Farmers walk to FADECO to ask questions and report agriculture related problems or other concerns facing them. As a one stop centre for information, the staff at FRC 100.8 FM receive the questions, and pass them onto competent staff (who can respond or refer the questions to other experts or identify experts who can respond to the questions). Referrals to experts is normally done via email. Sometime internet searches are made. Sometimes searches are made in our offline resource base (compendia, books, cd-rom libraries).

Sometimes farmers send text messages to our office mobile number. In the past months, FRC 100.8 FM has signed a contract with a SMS management company in Dar es salaam and has been allocated 2 short code numbers. What the farmer does is to use his/ her mobile phone:

Go to write new Message: Write FR.. leave one space, write a question and then send to 15551 or Write EFR .. leave one space, write question and send to 15522.

The question is delivered directly to our computer via a web managed system. We are therefore able to print it off, respond directly or email the question to our experts.

The farmer receives a received note on his/ her mobile phone immediately to confirm the message is received at FADECO.

After the question/ request is processed, we make a radio program with the response. Unfortunately, we cannot call nor text individual farmers who send questions… we do not have the money. So when we have the answer, in a radio program, we just broadcast on radio to the benefit of the individual farmers that asked the question and of many other farmers who may be listening.

Use of ICT infrastructure by journalists

At FADECO COMMUNITY RADIO, the facility is making it possible, not only to provide the traditional telecentres services (internet and library services) but now in a big way, we are able to package, re-package and develop information into radio programs that are broadcast via FADECO RADIO. This is a big achievement.

This therefore also now underscores the involvement of journalists with FADECO TELECENTRE. To start with, fadeco radio has teamed with a number of journalists who provide news to the station; while at the same time, taking news to from the station. But specifically how do the journalists use the telecentre:

1. Accessing news stories from the internet: Journalists use our internet facilities to search news stories from the internet. Some of the stories are used on our radio station.
2. Also they use the internet to communicate with other journalist to send stories or news via email. I have seen also journalists use SKYPE to communicate and provide live reporting to their bureaus in Dar es salaam.
3. One thing at FADECO TELECENTRE is the integration of the different ICTS: we have in place VSAT for internet access, Fax, telephone services (landline and mobile). These ICTS are used integrally for content generation (esp. news) and for communication with others.
4. Journalists come to use the telecentre to send faxes or receive faxes, check their emails as mentioned above, but also most important, they use our facilities for interviewing, recording, and editing. The telecdntre is laos used as a meeting place for journalists in the area. Some of them prefer to use the centre also for their meetings and;
5. One other use has been with ONLINE study. I have seen 2-4 journalists coming to the telecentre, just because they are doing online journalist or media studies.
6. And lastly, journalists use our telecentre for secretarial purposes like to write their stories or to print them or to photocopy documents. A few have borrowed our recorders, after which they download content on the computers, edit them and go away with content edited and stored on CDs.

This is a rather fragmented narration of the general benefits of FADECO RADIO/ TELECENTRE to the general public and on how we are integrating different ICTs.

Regards,

Joseph Sekiku
FADECO Community Radio

From 20-30 April 2009 e-agriculture will be hosting a virtual forum in Spanish on Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas (Foro de telefonía móvil en áreas rurales). The forum is a continuation of an English-language initiative undertaken by e-agriculture in November 2008. Participants will examine the challenges that rural communities face in enhancing the benefits of mobile telephony, and look at some examples of interesting initiatives and good outcomes from around the globe.

Subject Matter experts involved in the forum include:

Expert & Lead Facilitator:
Bruce Girard – Director, Comunica

Subject Matter Experts:
Roxana Barrantes – Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Héctor Carril – Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL)
Mr. Marcelo Echague – Secretaría de Comunicaciones of Argentina
Marcelo Galarza – Fundación Chasquinet
Karel Novotny- Knowledge Sharing Coordinator Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Danilo Piaggesi – Inter-American Development Bank
Roxanna Samii – International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Facilitators:
Charlotte Masiello-Riome, Communications Expert and e-Agriculture Advisor
Michael Riggs, Knowledge and Information Management Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Lisa M. Cespedes, FAO

To participate in the forum you must register on the e-Agriculture platform at http://www.e-agriculture.org/regform.html

During a special session on community broadcasting, Jummai Umar, Citizenship Program Manager for Microsoft Nigeria and Anglophone West Africa, presented a paper Amplifying the People’s Voices: Community Broadcasting in a Digital Era. Jummai has kindly allowed us to publish her paper here.

_________________________________

Vox populi, vox dei, “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God”, as stated in a letter in 798 from the scholar Alcuin of York in present day UK to Charlemagne also known as Charles the Great, whose empire included much of present day Western and Central Europe. Through time People’s voices have been and remain a critical instrument in the development and sustenance of any society. This is more so in this era of the ascent of the Information Society, Democracy (government of the people, by the people and for the people) and the rule of law, assertion of human rights, empowerment and development of the people at the grass-roots.

In order to communicate government policies to the people as well as elicit and encourage the people to give voice to their own ideas, which they will own thus ensuring sustainability, on issues such as nation building, government at different levels had always used various media prominent among which is mass media, town hall meetings etc.  Today, though not utilized, the media of choice for our environment is Community Radio (CR). Arguably, CR is the “poor man’s GSM. As Charles Akolo Katsibi in his 08 October 2008 article in the Daily Trust titled Community radio in Nigeria’s democracy! succinctly asserts “The proliferation of media houses (print and broadcast) with diversity to ownership-private, group and or government is a clear definition of what is known as media pluralism.”? However, a closer look at this development indicates that all of these media are concentrated in the urban centres of the society. Except, of course, for the wider coverage and accessibility of radio, village dwellers do not have the presence of a media outfit.This is a gap that only CR can address.

Bruce Girard in a paper presented at the first International Workshop on Farm Radio Broadcasting titled The Challenges of ICTs and Rural Radio posited that “more than ninety years after the world’s first station was founded, radio is still the most pervasive, accessible, affordable, and flexible mass medium available. In rural areas, it is often the only mass medium available. You can corroborate this by taking the time to chat with the typical Nigerian night watchman colloquially called the Maigadi. You will be surprised to be updated on current situations related to the US Election, Chechnya, Palestine, China trade surpluses, global economics and world politics. Predawn Hausa broadcasts from BBC (UK), Deutsche Welle (Germany) and VOA (USA) educate and empower these people with information. We must ask ourselves, why do these nations invest in foreign language radio services?

Low production and distribution costs have made it possible for radio to interpret the world from local perspectives, and to respond to local needs for information.  More than any other mass communication medium, radio speaks in the language, and with the accent, of its community.  Its programming reflects local interests and it can make important contributions to both the heritage and the development of the cultures, economies and communities that surround it.  Again we must ask ourselves, if radio and other mass media give the average person living in the rural areas a voice and how amplified are such voices?

Community Broadcasting:
Community broadcasting as a precursor of present day online social networking is unique in its focus and structure.  Think of community broadcasting as pre-Internet YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace.  According to Liora Salter in an article in the Canadian Encyclopaedia titled, ‘Broadcasting, Community’; “Community broadcasting is designed to fulfil social and cultural needs by allowing members of the audience to participate in decisions about programming and, in the case of radio, in the ownership of stations.  It serves local communities, reflecting the diversity of their views and needs, and provides access to volunteer participants.  It is public broadcasting, but it is not operated by a government or a government agency.”

Sadly, Nigeria has been, and continues to be, left behind and according to Prof. Umaru Pate from University of Maiduguri in an interview with Daily Trust Newspaper of August 23, 2008 said concerning community radio in Nigeria “One thing I must tell you is that in the whole of West Africa today, it is only Nigeria – which is incidentally the biggest of all and the richest, too – that does not have a policy on community radio stations.  All the other West African countries have policies and not only policies; they have existing, robust and very well functioning community radio regimes.  Here in Nigeria, there have been attempts by individuals and groups to convince the government to initiate and promulgate a policy on community radio, there are some impressions being given particularly in some government cycles that we have a policy on that but if you take your time to go through the NBC policy, they cannot be described as community radio per se considering the cost and other prohibitive requirements”.

When broadly allowed, in Nigeria, CR will positively empower our people and crystallize our fledgling democracy.  However there are several challenges as Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, in his 18 September 2008 Daily Trust article observes that “Community broadcasting opens up access which might be very difficult to understand for those who have lived within the dictatorial ambience which unfortunately has operated for a long time in Nigeria’s broadcasting policy.  The bureaucratic argument that the radio spectrum must be tightly regulated had been the ruling mantra in the Nigerian tradition for a very long time.  But that has also gone hand-in-hand with the deformed nature of Nigeria’s democratisation.  So up there, within the ruling elite, the bureaucrats controlling the processes of regulation of broadcasting, and the commercial broadcasters, there is an alliance, which has not been particularly disposed to the opening up of the access to community broadcasting in Nigeria.  Of course, it has been very easy to manipulate the red herring of security, amongst many reasons to slow movement on that track.”

Community broadcasting in the digital era:
Media convergence around digital based Internet Protocols (IP) is a reality.  According to Jennifer Makunike-Sibanda – Regional Director, Federation of African Media Women, Southern African Development Community (FAMW-SADC), in a paper titled ‘Improving Access to Rural Radio by ‘Hard-to-Reach’ Women Audiences’, said: “First and foremost, I wish to underscore the point that the convergence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has to date brought to the fore the emergence of the phenomenon of creative divergence – this positions knowledge as the new prime resource in the world economy.  Secondly, there has been a noted tendency by countries in transition to a knowledge economy (k-economy) to forestall development which is identifiable with the satisfaction of human needs – namely, a needs-oriented development or people-centred development which should be a necessary condition for development”.

To buttress this notion we note Stella Hughes – Senior Programme Specialist, UNESCO, Paris, France, in a paper titled ‘Community Multimedia Centres: Integrating Modern and Traditional Information and Communication Technologies for Community Development.’  Where she declares that “In the era of the knowledge society and the knowledge economy, access to the infrastructure to share information and knowledge is paramount for social and economic development.  It is evident that the traditional forms of knowledge acquisition are insufficient to foster an inclusive knowledge society.  People and communities in the developing world need access to the mechanisms that provide multiple sources of rapid information – and information exchange – which traditional ways of accumulating and exchanging knowledge cannot deliver.”

She further said “only when the Internet and other ‘new’ ICTs are combined with ‘traditional’ community radio, can all members of a community – irrespective of languages spoken or level of learning – be fully included in the process of accessing, identifying, producing and exchanging information relevant to their needs.”

Amplifying the People’s Voices:
There is no doubt that the past decade has witnessed an unprecedented achievement in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) to the extent that even the developing economies like Nigeria now have access to ICT equipment that have great potentials of amplifying the people’s voices.  With many mobile phones being equipped with cameras, and video cameras, internet outlet for posting broadcasts, sites such as You Tube, FaceBook, MySpace, personal online sites and blogs, accessing and uploading information has become easy.  Many media houses now rely on information and live pictures and videos captured by private individuals (i-report) to report on events as they happen.  GSM operators in Nigeria have equipped the rural dwellers with similar opportunity to contribute to information and knowledge sharing, except for the absence of community radios where such generated voices of the people could be amplified.  The digital era has opened up a huge space for often marginalized persons to have a voice.  It was once believed that mobile phones were not for all, or that they might in some manner jeopardise the security of the society.  This has been found NOT to be that case, as I am also confident that CR will enhance the security of the society if allowed to flourish.

We are witnessing digital migration as analogue broadcasting technology gradually gives way to digital broadcasting technology with more sophisticated technological and information transmitting backbone.  The main benefit of digital broadcasting is the efficient use of the radio (broadcasting) frequency spectrum, thereby freeing that frequency spectrum.

However, in line with the adage “use it or lose it” the inability or unwillingness of Federal Government to licence CR stations will be undermined by advances in technology which are providing alternatives.  If Nigeria does not put in place structures to licence and control CR Stations then they will develop via other means in an increasingly globalised environment which the Nigeria state will not be able to control.  For example, a few years ago a prominent Nigerian journalist made unsuccessful efforts to secure a domestic FM Broadcasting licence.  Today, he operates an AM Radio station out of Spain that broadcasts to all of West Africa.

Internet Radio is arguably an advanced form of a digitally converged Community Radio station.  We are not talking about radio stations that stream their media across the Internet like the BBC in the UK, but Radio stations that exist exclusively on the Internet.  Firms like Com One, Revo, Roku, Terratec and Tivoli have each developed and market their own brand of tabletop or bookshelf radios that use Wireless Ethernet/ Wireless Fidelity and commonly known as Wi-Fi which is the most common wireless IP networking standard.  These Internet radio receivers cost from under N10,000.  Users can tune these radios in the same manner that most of us use our existing radio sets.  The reception is digitally crystal clear with no static with the current choice of up to 10,000, and rising, existing Internet radio stations from all over the world.  It is a matter of when, not if, Nigerians will use this media.

Twenty years ago a group of El-Salvadorans and Canadians combined radio broadcasting and new ICTs to help bring about social and political change, democracy and development in Central America in a way that could now be referred to as Radio2.0.  In 2003, a book titled ‘The One to Watch: Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity’ Edited by Bruce Girard asserted that “The Internet and other new ICTs are changing radio in the developing world.  But far from making it less relevant, they are opening up hitherto unimagined possibilities:

• Broadcasters, who used to have to travel for hours or even days to find a public library to research a programme, now have instant access to the Internet;
• National, regional and global radio news agencies are making world news and alternative perspectives available to even the most remote communities;
• The radio/ telecommunications combination is helping to keep communities together, despite the distances imposed by migration.

The cases presented in this book are among the first examples of the convergence of radio and new ICTs for development, and the book underscores the significant potential of the combination.  In this convergence, radio promises to take on even greater significance and value.  For this reason, we believe that radio is the one to watch.”  As many of us are aware Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and Africa Independent Television (AIT) are watched, while Voice of Nigeria (VON) is listened to, overseas and especially by Nigerians in the Diaspora.

Some aspects of Internet Radio are challenging, especially those areas dealing with international jurisdictions and the limits of national sovereignty.  For example, as Nigeria through the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) facilitates the roll out of last mile IP access how will the Nigeria state control anyone from setting up a Nigeria centric Internet radio station on a web server based in another country.  How will the Nigerian state exercise jurisdictional control over a foreign based “VIRTUAL” Internet radio station that “apparently” broadcasts “from Katsina,” about Katsina, and in a Katsina dialect?

China among other nations have developed sophisticated, expensive and as some have argued in the long-run futile initiatives to comprehensively filter all Internet traffic.  Furthermore, our current IP infrastructure makes this problematic as Nigeria has found in dealing with the relatively less sophisticated problems of “Internet 419” and “Yahoo Yahoo boys.”  As the first in a series of steps, we humbly advice government to open up the CR window, so that there is a framework that it can develop and adapt, which will eventually encompass Internet radio as that sector opens up.

It must be noted no CR station has even been involved in any subversive or anti-people activities anywhere in the world.  As noted earlier, security has been used as a red herring to side track the opening of a CR policy window.  However, in the case of the Genocide of Rwanda, it was found that Government owned Radio stations were culpable of instigating the genocide.

As noted in Spore Vol. No. 109 published by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, in Feb. 2004 “The next generation of rural radio is already with us.  Once prized for their ‘proximity’ to local news as well as local listeners, progressive rural stations have added on several news layers of quality, thanks to the Internet.  Research by local stations can now easily have a global spread, and programmes can be shared all over the world, as happens between diaspora migrant communities and their home villages.”

In January 2005, LG Electronics released the World’s First Digital Broadcast-Enabled Mobile Phone. Today any of us with minimal exposure can upload, store and broadcast video streams from our mobile phones by leveraging on initiatives from firms like Qik, World TV and Cybersoc.com.  This has been the direction of Community Broadcasting and it is happening around the world without us.  Two years ago CNN asked its views to submit “iReports” and to date CNN has received more than 175,000 videos and photos.  According to the Max Digital Media Newswire article titled ‘CNN Celebrates Second Anniversary of iReport’ of Thu, 21 August 2008 “CNN’s user-generated content initiative now generates an average of nearly 15,000 iReports each month.”  These technology enabled services are empowering other people that we are expected to compete with, and we are not yet empowering ourselves as a nation to even try and successfully bridge this growing divide.  Clearly as a Nation we have not used our opportunities advantageously, and sadly we are all losing.

IP broadcasting and IP radio in particular, leverages on the Internet.  Globally the Internet like radio is pervasive and becoming increasingly so in Nigeria.  The Internet like radio is simultaneously global in scope while being local in nature.  Recent Internet services are making it an oral medium like radio.  Oral media are coming closer to our inherent African comfort zone as a people with our rich oral traditions.  The Internet like radio involves people in an interactive medium.  According to Bruce Girard in his paper ‘The Challenges of ICTs and Rural Radio’ he postulates that “It has been said that the Internet is a window to the world – offering a view that includes a wealth of knowledge and information.  Local radio is a mirror that reflects a community’s own knowledge and experience back at it.  The convergence of the two just might offer us the most powerful tool we have yet known to combine research and reflection to harness knowledge for development.”  Such convergence cannot happen in Nigeria until a critical mass of functional CR stations exist.

CR can pass on knowledge useful to the daily lives of the people much more effectively than GSM phones or the use of cyber-cafes.  Health and wellbeing, agriculture and food security, justice and accountability, national security and democratic stability, business and the economy have all been shown to improve through the knowledge gained and empowerment achieved through CR.
To date (Oct. 2008), Nigeria has issued only ten CR licences and only the station at the University of Lagos is operating.  As of July 2005, Mozambique had 45; Senegal 14, Malawi 10, Ghana 8, Namibia 6, Republic of Benin 5, Sierra Leone 4 and Sudan had 4 functional CR stations.

Way forward:
The Chinese philosopher Lao -Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC) in his book The Way of Lao-tzu stated that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” We thus request that government through the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) consider issuing CR frequencies/ licences as a first step/ pilot to at least 1 qualified rural cooperative, as guided by NBC rules, in each of the 6 Geopolitical zones.  We understand that the NBC is ready to oblige once they secure the requisite clearance from Mr. President.  Thus, our prayer is that Mr. President, with all deliberate speed and due diligence, approve at least six CR frequencies as pilots so as to open the way for a broader implementation, and full opening up of the CR window.

Nigeria is a signatory to the African Charter on Broadcasting, which is a legally binding multilateral document.  This defines Community Broadcasting as the third tier of broadcasting.  CR that is owned and operated by and for a community and broadcasts in its dialects is in the truest sense the “poor” persons’ ICT.  It should be noted that the basic low-end equipment for CR Stations with a range of 15 to 30 km costs from N700,000 to N2,000,000.  This is exclusive of power, accommodation and overheads.

An excellent draft policy was developed in 2006 by a 17 member committee chaired by the pre-eminent communicator, Prof. Alfred Opubor.  This was deliberated on, by the 37th National Council on Information in Enugu in January/ February 2007.  To the best of our knowledge, all that remains is to present the policy draft to the FEC for deliberation and approval.  We unequivocally add our recommendation for approval by the FEC.

The way forward for Nigeria thus begins when the Federal Executive Council (FEC) considers and approves, in line with due process and the rule of law, the existing draft COMMUNITY RADIO (CR) POLICY which we aver is in line with the National Vision and the laudable development strategies of your administration.

Knowledge is the key to our survival, advancement and salvation. Technology, infrastructure and finance are extremely important.  But human experience demonstrates that it is thinking based on true knowledge that positively develops individuals, societies and mankind as a whole.  Economies grow as a part of this. We humbly pray that this administration considers, endorses and adopts the above suggestions.  A “servant leader” will be considered successful if the people can be empowered with knowledge to sustainably improve themselves, those around them, their own material circumstances and prepare better for the future of those yet unborn and the environment they will live within.

DIGITUS Vox populi, vox dei – The digital voice of the people [is] the voice of God.

Download a Spanish-language version of this article

When the GSM mobile telephone standard was developed engineers included the ability to send short text messages, up to 160 characters, between phones. Operators were sceptical about the service’s ability to interest customers or to generate revenue, but consumers massively took it up as a convenient and inexpensive alternative to voice calls.  With time applications and services were developed enabling, for example, broadcast messages, mobile payments, polling and information services. In 2007 global revenue from SMS messages was more than $50 billion with more than 1 trillion messages sent.(1)

As mobile phones become increasingly common, SMS messages are being used by community media in a variety of ways.

At its simplest, announcers and journalists announce their phone mumbers over the air and invite listeners to send messages with comments on the news, questions, greetings, song requests… Some of these are then used on-air. In some cases, stations have devised ways of generating feedback via mobiles without the listeners having to pay even the cost of an SMS message. For example, Xtreme FM, a community-oriented pirate station in the UK, has a mobile permanently in the studio:

“It vibrates every few seconds like a faulty alarm clock, as listeners call and text. Scrolling through its inbox, I notice scores of “missed calls”. Big N explains that this is how pirates gauge a record’s popularity. If listeners like a tune, they call in and then ring off, so the studio mobile registers a “missed call”. This costs callers nothing. If Xtreme receives over 20 missed calls from different numbers before a track ends, the DJs play it again. This is why teenagers listen to pirate radio: it’s interactive in ways legal stations can’t match.”(2)

Another example is Interactive Radio for Justice, a radio programme in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that answers listeners’ questions about justice issues sent by SMS. Ethan Zuckerman points out that sending questions via SMS allows for anonymity, an important point when your question is: “Are soldiers allowed to stay at my house and eat my food without paying for it?”

Desktop software and web-based services allow stations to do more. International broadcasters such as the BBC make extensive use of these tools as do some commercial stations. However, there are few examples of local and community radio using them, even though they offer a low-cost and relatively simple way of stimulating participation and interaction.

There are various software and service packages available. Among them is FrontlineSMS(3), a programme that runs on a computer connected by a cable to an ordinary mobile phone. Unlike most other programs and services, FrontlineSMS does not require a connection to the internet – messages are composed, stored and processed on the computer and sent and received on the mobile. There are a variety of tools available with different capabilities and pricing.(4) Basic services useful for community media include:

• - Broadcast messages to dozens or even thousands of mobiles advising them of a special programme or an important community activity

• - Keyword response – when a listener sends the word “ocio” the station replies with a text message listing activities while “noticias” is answered with current headlines and “Colectivo a Lima” is answered with the departure times of the next six buses to the capital

Experiencies combining SMS services and broadcast radio can be found in moments of political crisis and natural disasters. For example, SMS and radio were used to help monitor the 2000 presidential elections in Ghana:

[V]oters who were prevented from voting used mobile phones to report their experience to call-in shows on local radio stations. The stations broadcast the reports, prompting police to respond to the accusations of voter intimidation. Had voters called the police directly, it’s possible that authorities might not have responded — by making reports public through the radio, voters eliminated the possibility of police announcing that there had been no reports of voter intimidation. Similar techniques have been used in Sierra Leone, Senegal, and even in the United States — American voters used mobile phone cameras and Websites to record reports of voting irregularities during the 2006 congressional elections.(5)

The ongoing political crisis in Zimbabwe provides another example of the complementarity of radio and SMS. Faced with one of the most repressive media environments in the world, Gerry Jackson founded SW Radio Africa located in the UK and broadcasting to Zimbabwe on shortwave. The signal is jammed in urban areas (thanks to Chinese technology, according to Jackson), but gets through to rural zones. The station also streams it programming on the internet and podcasts ara available to the very few connected to the internet from Zimbabwe, but increasingly important are the headlines sent to phones in Zimbabwe using SMS. According to Jackson:

Currently we’re most excited about our latest endeavour – sending SMS news headlines into Zimbabwe, via mobile phones. We generate news headlines on a daily basis anyway – so this is just another way of using what already exists.

It’s nice and cost effective… because there is only the one cost, actually sending the texts. In two months we’ve built up an address database of about 2,000 mobile phone numbers.

Like many, Zimbabweans truly love their mobile phones and of course what we’re banking on is the virus effect. We also get up to 100 requests a day to be added to the service so it’s growing rapidly.(6)

During natural disasters SMS and radio have been used to provide emergency communication, for example an earthquake Yogyakarta and Central Java in Indonesia  killed more than 5,000 people and displaced 1.6 million in May 2006. With support from Internews, a U.S.-based NGO, a radio station and SMS text messaging provided news about relief efforts.

The service was run through an emergency AM radio station, Radio Punokawan, established by the Indonesian Press and Broadcast Society, with support from Internews. In addition to radio broadcasts, important information was sent and received from the newsroom via text messaging. Outgoing messages warned of aftershocks and identified communities that had not yet received government assistance. More than 180 Indonesian journalists distributed and received information through the service.(7)

Some stations have incorporated SMS polling into their programming. During Kenya’s 2007 elections a local radio and television stations and newspapers used SMS to poll listeners on a number of questions. While the  results of the polls were posted on a website and discussed in the local media, the questions were designed to provoke debate about democracy rather than to measure public opinion. Examples included: “Have politicians done enough to fight corruption and mismanagment of public resources?”, “Do you think special seats should be created for women in parliament?”, “Does party politics foster national unity?” and “Do you feel your vote has the power to make a difference?”.

A new project in Grahamstown, South Africa proposes to use SMS to create a network of citizen journalists for a local newspaper. Eighty high school journalists trained as citizen journalists will send their news and views via SMS messages. A selection of the messages will be printed in the newspaper while others will be redistributed via SMS to community members. The project coordinator admits that it will be difficult to fit the news into the 160 characters that an SMS message can have, but they are already thinking of how to overcome the problem.

In the future, Berger hopes that the program will expand and possibly include other technologies like MMS (multimedia) messages. “We want to interface with the newspaper website, and we’re developing open source software to link the two,” he said. Berger said that there would also be research into the effectiveness of the project. “Then we’re also going to research next year the significance of this whole project,” he said. “Is it making a difference? What does it mean for democracy to have a lot of citizen journalism and to have young people contributing to the public opinion?”(8)

Projects combining SMS and radio have been enabled by the rapid takeup of mobile phones. Globally there is one mobile phone for every two people and in many countries of Latin America the majority of poor people now have access to a mobile telephone.(9) Internet connections and fixed line telephones are still out of reach for much of the world’s population, but mobile telephones have spread faster than any other communication technology in history.

“The only technology that compares to the mobile phone in terms of pervasiveness and accessibility in the developing world is the radio. Indeed, considered together, radios and mobile phones can serve as a broad-distribution, participatory media network with some of the same citizen-media dynamics of the Internet, but accessible to a much wider, and non-literate audience.”(10)

A study of mobile telephone use by people from low-income households in seven Latin American and Caribbean countries indicates high level of SMS by the region’s poor, apparently attracted to the technology because of its low-cost.(11)

Lessons learned?

We have not independently evaluated the experiences presented here, relying instead on accounts gathered from various media accounts and websites. As a result we are unable to clearly identify many of the enabling aspects or problems encountered. Certainly the rapid expansion of mobile telephony, the low cost of SMS messages and the aspirations of community radio stations to be accessible and participatory are important factors for enabling SMS messages for encouraging community participation and feedback.

The real question is not what has enabled the projects described here, but why are more community radio stations not making active use of SMS to communicate with their listeners? Certainly the very rapid take up of mobile telephony is one reason. In many countries the number of users has doubled over the past two years or so and it is understanable that radio stations will take some time to devise strategies for using the technology. Other reasons could include the limitations of 160 characters per message and users who do not know how to use SMS.(12)

While there has been some spontaneous use of SMS messages as a way of facilitiating communication with listeners and community members, more complex projects using SMS servers and applications have generally emerged as a response to political crises or natural disasters. There are few, if any, experiences of complex uses of SMS without external funding and technical support, even though the financial and technical resources required are minimal.

A joint research project of AMARC’s Latin America and Caribbean region and ALER, will establish “labs” to experiment with the use of various ICTs in community radio stations in Latin America. Including advanced SMS servers and services in the package of options offered by the labs should provide some information about the appropriateness and potential of this technology for the region’s community media.

Bruce Girard
July 2008
If you know about or are involved in an SMS/community media project, please tell us about it as a reply to this post or by email.  blog2[at]comunica[dot]org

Footnotes

1. http://www.portioresearch.com/Mob_Mess_Fut_brochure.pdf
2. http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0309/msg00107.html
3. http://frontlinesms.com
4. MobileActive has evaluated some of these tools and their use in campaigns http://mobileactive.org/wiki/Desktop_SMS_Campaign_Tools. Also see their comparison of various tools at http://mobileactive.org/wiki/SMS_Tool_Comparison_Matrix
5. Ethan Zukerman, Mobile Phones and Social Activism: Why cell phones may be the most important technical innovation of the decade” http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/index.php?s=vastly+exceeds+internet+usage
6. Texting news to bypass censors, http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=142&Itemid=1
7. Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs http://mobileactive.org/files/MobilizingSocialChange_full.pdf
8. Local news with SMS http://mobileactive.org/spreading-news-sms-0
9. A study of 7,000 low income households in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago found that in every country except Mexico a majority of respondents had used a mobile phone in the past 3 months. In 4 of the 7 countries a majority of respondents owned their own mobile phones. http://www.dirsi.net/espanol/content/view/197/71/
10. Ethan Zuckerman http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/index.php?s=%22vastly+exceeds+internet+usage%22
11. A DIRSI study of 7,000 low income households in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago found that in every country except Mexico a majority of respondents had used a mobile phone in the past 3 months. In 4 of the 7 countries a majority of respondents owned their own mobile phones. http://www.dirsi.net/espanol/content/view/197/71/
12. The DIRSI study cited lack of knowledge as the main reason given by people when asked why they did not use SMS. According to the study, this is “not surprising given that most respondents are relatively new users (two years or less). In fact, our results suggest that adoption of services beyond voice increases over time, as users advance along the technical learning curve.”

The session report and a few photos that were included on the CD are below, along with a link to the full WEMF III report.

WEMF website (where you can find the full report)

SESSION 6: ROLE OF ‘OWN-TIME MEDIA’/‘ANY-PLACE MEDIA’ IN THE SERVICE FOR DEVELOPMENT – MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

A rapidly growing number of people in the OECD countries listen to radio content of their choice through podcasts on their iPods or other MP3 players. This allows them to have access to high quality content in the area of their specific interest and at a time and place that doesn’t conflict with their work and obligations. What about the developing world? Is there a scope to use MP3 players beyond urban music consumption, particularly to make specific high quality content available to the poor and people in remote areas? What could be the role of public service broadcasters who have a competitive advantage in providing trusted high quality content? The panelists discussed some encouraging first lessons and trends in a global and local context that is shaped by media convergence.

The chairman for Session 6 was Dr Abdul Waheed Khan, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, UNESCO and the panel, in order of speaking were:

• Ms Lucy Hooberman, Innovation Executive, Research and Innovation, BBC Future Media and technology
• Ms Seema B. Nair, Project Leader UNESCO India
• Mr Bruce Girard, Expert in community radio and local media, Comunica
• Ms Kristine Pearson, Chief Executive, Freeplay Foundation

Dr Abdul Waheed Khan opened the session with a reference to the revolution in information and communication technology which in the last 20 years had led to an explosion with Internet radio, pod casting ‘and all kinds of other ….castings’ in the 21 st century.

He noted that in a previous session Nigel Parsons had referred to a ‘renaissance’ for radio as the priority medium for information and access by the poor. The order of priority of access to technologies in poorer counties was first radio, secondly television then mobile telephony and finally the Internet. In rich counties users had access to all of these. It had also been mentioned in a previous session that mobile telephony had become more commonplace even in developing countries.

Internationally there was a trend from real time to ‘my time’; However Dr Abdul Waheed Khan asked whether this was commonplace or only true for the developed countries.

Ms Lucy Hooberman said that in a previous day’s session her colleague Richard Porter had mentioned that the BBC World Services was now in its 75 th year. However she pointed out that the BBC was only now celebrating 10 years of Internet presence with bbc.co.uk.

Research had shown that some 12 million people in the UK owned an MP3 player and of these 2 million claimed to have made use of them for podcasts. Most people were actually subscribing to podcasts rather than searching around and the most popular service had been found to be iTunes.

A radio podcasting trial had been run to assess audience demand for programming and the team’s ability to maintain a service to the public. Happily the trial had been very popular and had now become a service.
Although podcasting was still a niche activity it was growing, but it was constrained in that it required an effort on the part of users to subscribe, to download and to organise themselves to use the service.

For the BBC podcasting was part of a journey to make its content available any time, any place. It was also a part of the BBC’s commitment to helping the public understand how to get the most out of their licence fee and to become ‘digital citizens’.

Ms Hooberman cautioned that, once an organisation went down this route, there were a lot of things to think about. Opening up to the public and allowing the public to discuss and contribute content, although a very good step to take, was also a very big step which made very great demands on staff and their time.

An important task was to work with the public on media literacy as it could not be taken for granted that all new developments would be immediately understandable to everybody. For a very large organisation, that applied to the staff as well as the public. There was a job of work to be done to help people to change their styles of work from simply broadcasting to an audience to having a relationship with ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ but who were now content creators, co-creators and discussants on all aspects of content. This had relevance to the subject of the ‘public sphere’.

Ms Hooberman gave a few examples, the first being a pair of blogs, one for teachers and one for students, set up by the BBC World Service, for teaching English around the world. The dialogues had been found to be quite powerful.

‘Pods and Blogs’ was a BBC Radio 5 programme which made a major attempt to explain to the public the nature of pods and blogs, to review the blogosphere and to engage the public in discussion.

The iPM programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/) allowed possibilities for the audience to contribute content. An interesting feature was that the programme’s advanced running order was published at the planning stage so that, by the time the programmes went to air, users could actually see the changes to which they may have contributed.

Ms Seema B Nair said her work at UNESCO involved visiting communities concerning ICT and community radio initiatives across Asia. Typically it was seen that there were enormous problems of lack of access, lack of infrastructure, problems of literacy and a cultural diversity which did not allow centralised content. As a result of this there was no tried and tested model of anytime media.

UNESCO had tried to integrate rather than push technology. A good model of this was the eTUKTUK initiative in Kothmale, Sri Lanka. A tuktuk was a common type of three wheeled transport in South Asia. A lot of technology had been loaded into the vehicle including a laptop computer, a CDMA enabled Internet connection and a generator to allow the vehicle to operate in areas without electricity.
Kothmale community radio was perched on a hill with only two buses per day. It was therefore very difficult for access by members of the audience who might wish to participate in programming; eTUKTUK was a way of bringing the radio station out of the studio and into community.

In the region the majority Tamil community worked in the tea estates and, because of lack of literacy, access and education had virtually no voice in radio programming. With the commencement of the eTUKTUK initiative a variety of content was created from within the villages. The community provided themes and campaigns rather than one-off programmes. Amongst others there were campaigns against corruption, concerning health matters and for good access to drinking water.
Starting from radio the communities began looking to the computer to translate topics into short digital video stories using photographs and brief video clips. These had great impact in forcing the community to go beyond identifying problems to considering how those problems might be practically solved.

Ms Nair suggested that the Kothmale experience had shown that the use of one medium alone might not get the involvement of the community and so ‘radio browsing’ evolved where a presenter would browse the Internet for information during the programme. This technique had spread to television and Ms Nair described how a presenter, talking about HIV/AIDS, had demonstrated how to browse the Internet in conjunction with the content, thus teaching the audience about the practical value and use of the Internet.

Ms Nair concluded by suggesting that much as the discussion was about technology and how to use technology for development, it was vital to consider aspects that were crucial to the community and to focus on not just making content for them but getting them to make their own content. Only then would the activity be sustainable in the long term.

Mr Bruce Girard was pleased to note that technology was catching up with what community radio had been doing since it started broadcasting 50 years ago. User generated content, citizen journalism, narrow casting and participation in every sense of the word had been at the very roots of community radio since the first stations were set up in the late 1940s.

Community radio stations were owned by their communities with participation as the essential key. This included participation in production, in feedback and in determining the editorial policy of the station. This appeared to go way beyond what had been allowed on the Internet so far.

Participation was a key and radio stations were now making the Internet an essential part of what they did. They were making very effective use of the Internet and mobile telephony in several ways:

1) Information and news gathering – Even though not everyone had access, literacy or linguistic skills or the skill to use search engines effectively, community radio stations were playing an intermediary role and the radio and the Internet could work together. Community radio journalists with an intimate knowledge of the community and technical knowledge of the Internet used the Net as a source of information. They searched for relevant information and then translated and contextualised it so it could be used by the community.

2) Networking – At the second conference of the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC) in 1986, participants had voted to ask the board to look into the possibility of setting up an international news agency. AMARC was unable to comply at the time because just the basic infrastructure would have cost many millions of dollars. Ten years later, in 1996, Púlsar began operation as an Internet-based news agency offering news in text and audio formats to hundreds of radio stations in Latin America. Now community radio stations that were previously isolated had access to low-cost networks for exchanging news and audio programmes and for designing and implementing national and international campaigns.

3) Interaction and community participation – Radio stations had been able to harness the rapid increase in use of mobile phones to enable new ways of community participation via vois and SMS messages. Where previously listeners might have had to travel for hours to reach the station to ask a question or make a comment, they could now call.

Mr Girard felt strongly that an iPod with earphones wasn’t something that would bring people out of isolation. He considered podcasting not to be broadcasting but a distinct platform with different uses from broadcasting. One of community broadcasting’s biggest challenges was to take people out of their isolation, but podcasting, at least as it was currently practised with iPods and earphones, could not do this.

Ms Kristine Pearson explained that the Freeplay Foundation was all about access to information for the very poorest people in sub-Saharan Africa where it had been her great privilege to work for the last 20 years.
Freeplay had started nine years ago with big black wind-up radios with great sound quality. One thousand of them had been given to child-headed households and had made a huge difference to the children of this large and vulnerable population to whom, surprisingly, the most popular programme was ‘the news’.

Ms Pearson asked what was the point of radio programming if people couldn’t listen to it. The Freeplay Foundation was all about access. In sub-Saharan Africa, electric power was limited and AA batteries were of low quality, toxic and too expensive. Batteries were also a gender issue since men were the only ones who had money, could afford batteries and thus operate radios. So how was programming to reach women and children?

Ms Pearson described the ‘Lifeline’ radio launched in 2003. The radio could use solar power or could be hand cranked and its design took into account the fact that the users did not have experience of technology. Environmental hazards were accounted for in the design including the fact that the cable had been found to be very popular with hungry goats. Some 160,000 units had been distributed. However, due to the communal nature of the audience, it could be estimated that the total audience might be a least 6 million listeners.

Showing the next innovation, the prototype of the ‘Lifeline MP3’, Ms Pearson said it was the latest development of the Lifeline radio. Colourfully and practically designed, every feature of the radio had had input from orphaned children on the premise that if it worked for children it would work for adults. This radio would be able to record programming or replay pre-recorded material via a USB slot on the radio which allowed it to be connected to an MP3 unit.

Ms Pearson concluded with the statement that “Where others talk first about content, we talk about access.”

Forum, Questions and Answers

The chairman summed up by noting that presentations had ranged from cutting edge innovations such as podcasting to three examples of people working at the grass roots level.

People did not develop technology with millennium development goals in mind and indeed there was near consensus on the belief that almost all the goals would not be met by 2015.

It was development planners and practitioners who examined new technologies and looked at how technological developments might benefit the task of meeting development goals. He asked Ms Hooberman for her views on how best we could apply technological development such as podcasting to developing countries.

Ms Hooberman responded that podcasting was just one of the ways of delivering content. However she felt that portability and miniaturisation were very important. She described how with an iPod one could plug in a microphone, record an interview with someone in the forum, call someone up in any part of the world and have a dialogue with them. The questions arose however as to whom that dialogue should be with and what its purpose would be. Certainly the tools were there but others needed to identify the goals which, in the shorter term, needed to be concentrated upon. Knowing this, the broadcast technologists could perhaps contribute towards meeting those goals.

Mr Javed Jabbar, Pakistan, suggested that in order to meet the ‘elusive’ millennium goals, quality of service, delivery, governance and social justice was very important. He asked if any of the projects were part of a larger programme with quantifiable goals and results; for example the reduction of child and maternal mortality rates etc related to the targets of the MDG.

Bruce Girard replied that this was a very important question and one which all who had been working in community development for years had been concerned about. The methodology of measuring impact was however difficult. Although he felt that he could not answer the question directly he referred to an encouraging example related by Mr James Deane concerning work in India where the BBC World Service Trust had 50 researchers doing just that kind of work. This was also happening in some very complicated places such as Afghanistan and Sudan. The compilation of all this information was the next objective and the results of this could be very valuable.

Kristine Pearson said that impact of information was woefully under-resourced and that appropriate distribution of funding was an issue. Listnership figures were important but there were serious weaknesses in surveys. For example in one survey a person who listened to a programme only once a month was considered to be a listener. Impact assessment required the audience to listen to the programme throughout the series. Control groups were also important.

Seema B Nair stressed the value of ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ evaluations of a programme. People in the community could be trained to play a part in this. It was important that the data must be seen to serve the people they referred to.

Dr Sreedher Ramamurthy from India quoted a positive example of impact which took place after campus radio broadcasts on HIV screening. Six months after the broadcasts a visiting UNICEF representative had asked students if they knew about tests for AIDS. The students said yes but that they were afraid to go for the tests themselves. However they agreed to go for the test if the UNICEF representative would go with them. Radio had clearly made an impact.

Mr Mark Selby of Nokia was delighted to hear that mobile phones were being used in combination with radio and said more than half Nokia’s mobile phones included a built in FM tuner. Many devices included MP3 capability and experiments had been done with visual radio and a recently launched Internet radio service.The panel was asked what other features they would like mobile phones to have.

Kristine Pearson replied that reduced power consumption to improve battery life, phones that were not ‘over-engineered’ and phones with larger screens and improvements to allow touch operation would help people with bad eyesight but who were too poor to afford glasses.

Bruce Girard added that devices designed for use in developed counties were not always suitable for those in developing countries and that phones which came with open source software were valuable since they made it possible for specialist end users to develop applications to solve their problems.

Seema B Nair said it would be valuable if telephones could include access in local languages and that she would like to see some kind of user interface for which illiteracy would not be a barrier to operation.

Mutasim Abdeldadir from Sudan related another positive experience in that, before programmes on UNICEF and UNESCO rural radio, girls had not been allowed to go to school after reaching nine years of age. Since exposure to radio programmes on the topic it has been noted that more girls were being allowed to attend school beyond that age. There had also been health education benefits. “Community radio comes first,” said Mutasim.

A delegate suggested that governments, especially in the region, did not like community radio since they found it threatening. Some authorities thought that a mobile phone in the hands of a reporter was a recipe for disaster. In India the BBC had trained female reporters who were not allowed to report. He asked what was being done to ensure that communities had access to programming and not just to filler music.

The chairman mentioned that, in India, he had asked for an increase in local radio as long as 32 years ago and now it was happening. It had taken all that time to succeed and it was true that governments often did not like freedom of expression and freedom of speech. The best hope was that media personnel should practice true principles and gain trust as professionals. Only then could they stand up, as they must, and exercise their rights.

Mr Sharad Sadhu, ABU said that it was impressive to see the Lifeline radio set but that in this part of the world there were also some very small hand cranked radios available, costing only a few dollars. UNESCO had also funded the transmission-cum-studio device known as ‘Radio-In–A-Box’, which could be seen on demonstration at the Global Knowledge Forum exhibition. This device could be very valuable for community radio. He had thought that community radio was for the empowerment of the community to make their own programmes in the way they wanted to make them. It now appeared that some of the approaches mentioned by the panel indicated something different. He asked if such intervention, for whatever reason, was in the true spirit of community radio.

Bruce Girard wondered if this arose from his reference to acting as an intermediary between the community and the Internet. However the people involved were from the community itself. In his view it was not something that had been imposed but something that was happening very organically and naturally and was very good.

Seema B Nair said that since ‘Any Time Any place’ was being discussed, it was a matter of available infrastructure There was no question of going against the principles of community radio but of ensuring a match between the technology and what the community wanted to do with it.

Mr Bayero Agabi from Africa Independent Television, Nigeria, said that in connection with using hand sets to transmit radio programming he had been expecting to hear more about regulatory problems. In Nigeria there were more telephone hand sets than radio sets and this might be a better tool to deliver radio. When a company had tried to deliver hand-held TV it had been obstructed by regulation. Mr Agabi suggested that although we referred to convergence, the greater challenge was to allow the converging technologies to operate freely and collaboratively. He had hoped that the panel would touch on this huge issue.

The Container Project is an innovative, arts-driven engine for community empowerment through creativity. It is based in a bright yellow converted shipping container in the heart of Palmers Cross, a rural community noted for its poverty and associated social problems.

Read about the mobile CMC on UNESCO’s website.

The February 2008 issue of SPORE, the magazine of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has an article by Ednah Karamagi, a member of a Ugandan team “committed to pushing out the ICT frontiers” describes some of the ways they are using Web 2.0 applications to help farmers boost production and sell their produce for a better price. The applications used include podcasts.

Another knowledge-sharing method we use is podcasts. Farmers who are knowledgeable about a given subject make recordings, currently in local languages, though we plan to add English at a later stage. These are then turned into audio CDs and distributed to other farmers, who have received CD players from BROSDI. Copies of these recordings are also uploaded on the CELAC website.

The three projects have one thing in common — they see podcasts as first and foremost a way of distributing programming to radio stations for rebroadcast over the air, rather than to individuals with MP3 players, a strategy that surely helps them reach much larger audiences.

Frontline SMS is a text messaging system “conceived, designed and written firmly with the needs of the non-profit sector in mind”. Basically it is an SMS management and broadcast system that runs on a computer connected to a mobile phone with a data cable. All you need to do is insert a SIM card and you broadcast SMS messages to your listeners and classify and process messages received from them.

Being able to send SMS messages to your listeners informing them of programme updates, events, etc. is great (only to listeners who have requested your info of course. Don’t send SMS spam!), but better yet is being able to receive, classify and process messages.

Frontline SMS uses a custom database to automatically store and classify incoming and outgoing messages, so a message received in the afternoon with a question or comment for the next day’s morning programme will be flagged for the morning programme’s attention instead of getting lost among dozens of messages on a mobile handset.

The database also keeps track of phone numbers and owners and allows messages to be sent to customised groups.The system also includes a ‘Survey Manager’ module that allows the running of surveys, an unscientific but seful way of taking the pulse of your community on an issue. You can also use its ‘Reply Manager’ to provide text-based information services in which a keyword sent in by a listener sends back a message about bus schedules, cultural events, or programme highlights.

Frontline SMS got a high profile when it was used in February 2007 to help coordinate monitoring of Nigeria’s elections and it is being used this week to provide support for a campaign against General Musharaff’s imposition of martial law in Pakistan.

I haven’t heard of Frontline or any other SMS management system being used by rural stations yet, but I would be interested in hearing about any trials or even plans.