Greetings all,
One factor to be borne in mind is the "long tail" of the feature-phone.
This refers to the lingering presence in poorer populations of devices
which, while they may access certain internet services, do so via cellular
data, and are unable to connect to WiFi. I surmise that many potential
users of offline medical hotspots, in particular patients at remote
clinics, still have such phones.
But that's changing! The new generation of "smart feature phones" using
KaiOS
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS>does have WiFi access, and has already
taken off in India. Where I am, South Africa, will see its first KaiOS
phone in the next few months. So let's hang in, and let's try to get
suitable apps developed for these devices.
Regards,
M.
On Monday, December 24, 2018, <offline-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Internet-in-a-Box (James Heilman)
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2018 17:14:27 -0700
From: James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com>
To: offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Offline-l] Internet-in-a-Box
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CAF1en7V2SUNxyfGyK5yRPwEa-Lq+RRi6vg51KGzgMJe6BxMwOw(a)mail.gmail.com>
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As the price of hardware continues to drop the financial barriers to health
information for all continue to fall. We are now able to package and ship
an offline version of Wikipedia in multiple languages for around 40 USD.
And we have sent out nearly 250 units in just over a year.
The question now is what are the remaining barriers to widespread
distribution and access? Is it a lack of awareness among those who need
this technology? Is it still too expensive? Are people looking for
different types of content? Or maybe different languages?
Peoples thoughts?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian