To me, Wikipedia Zero is the epitome of free knowledge to the (practically) lowest sector of our common people. One of the prominent question I put forward while the plans for Wikipedia Zero were going ahead, was that whether it will support the most basic phone and most basic subscription plans. When they said, it will (or they will make it will), I said, " That is Wonderful!"

Now it is only a matter of time that every other MSP will strive to get a share of the gains that will be brought through the 'originally free'  SMS packet slot.

BTW, did you know? SMS was supposed to be an absolutely  free service (to and for) right from the beginning while the first GSM standardization committee was working on that? It was a sad story that SMS was heavily commercialized later. The original concept was to make use of the "useless" bits of the GSM data packet to provide a "FREE" service!

(I was one of the delegate members curing the 1992 Matracom initiated protocol conference in Paris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_messaging_service#Early_implementations)

:(

On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 1:05 AM, manoj k <manojkmohanme03107@gmail.com> wrote:

Q: These kinds of deals are great if you have a mobile phone that can render data, but what is the Wikimedia Foundation doing to increase reach for people without those types of phones?

A: This is also a priority, and we are working on developing SMS and USSD services in which a user can search Wikipedia and read articles without a data-enabled phone. Unlike Wikipedia Zero, which utilizes the existing mobile site, these programs require additional infrastructure. For that reason, we anticipate being able to roll out those services later in 2013.

SMS സേവനവും ഉണ്ട്. ഞാന്‍ കാണാന്‍ വിട്ടുപോയതാണ്.

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