A mobile service for vehicle tax information

The user gets an SMS on the amount paid, date of payment, receipt number, and any amount that’s due In the first-of-its-kind service in Nepal, the transport department is providing vehicle information through mobile text messages, a citizen service that is particularly useful in a country where cars, two-wheelers and other vehicles attract an annual…

DEF & Ford Foundation to Organise 3-Day Wireless Access Workshop in Delhi

Digital Empowerment Foundation is in a process to organize three-day workshop on, ‘Wi-Fi Mesh Networking Technologies & Prospects’ on 6-8 August, 2012 in New Delhi, India. The objective of the three-day workshop is to understand theoretical and practical understanding of wireless environment in India especially driven through the unlicensed band facilities as provisioned by the…

DEF’s Petition to forego the spectrum fee altogether for running community radio stations

Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) has urged the National Advisory Council, Govt. to forgo the spectrum license fee altogether for community radio stations, run by non-profit organisations. In its petition, DEF has requested the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & IT to forego the five-fold increase (from Rs 19,700 to Rs 91,000) in license fee…

A mobile social network to share multimedia

The app can be used with equal ease on both simple feature phones and high-end smartphones New Delhi: India has primarily been a voice-based market for the telecom operators. But one company is seeking to change that trend. How about sending free videos, voice and photo messages over a phone data connection at a minimal…

Phones help empower women

In India, if true development has to be designed and pursued, it requires multi-stakeholder integration of issues and solutions. Kutch is the largest district in India with about two million people spread across 966 villages with 70% literacy. Kutch is also fast industrializing because of which, local communities say, crime and alcoholism have been rising.…

Text messages to aid maternity healthcare

Auto-generated texts provide mothers with information about immunization dates, medicines Gandhinagar: Veenaben Solanki, mother of a one-and-half year-old boy, recalls the first text message she received from the state government when she was pregnant. The message, in Gujarati, suggested that she reach a nearby public health clinic for various antenatal care services. She took up…