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/KaiOSdoes 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@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@gmail.com To: offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Offline-l] Internet-in-a-Box Message-ID: < CAF1en7V2SUNxyfGyK5yRPwEa-Lq+RRi6vg51KGzgMJe6BxMwOw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

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