Leapfrogging the Internet

Ten-dollar cell phones are easier to obtain than Internet access in many parts of the developing world. And now, thanks to software conceived by Ken Banks, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, cheap phones are making the Internet unnecessary in those places. Grassroots groups are exchanging vital information from laptop to cell phone in areas the Internet doesn’t reach. Banks’s FrontlineSMS text messaging software, which he offers for free, is used in more than 70 countries. It has helped locals monitor elections in Africa, run a rural health-care network in India, and receive commodity pricing information in Cambodia and El Salvador. Since 2005, the software has been downloaded more than 14,000 times, helping hundreds of thousands of people in a variety of ways.

Tell us more about FrontlineSMS. It’s software you install on any computer. Then you connect the computer to a mobile phone using a cable. Finally, with even just one bar of mobile phone signal, you can send text messages to communities and groups in the most rural areas. It leapfrogs into places where digital communication didn’t exist.

Where did the idea come from? In 2003 and 2004, I was working in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, which was experiencing a communication challenge with surrounding communities. The locals felt disenfranchised, not benefitting from park revenues. The people already had cell phones, but the park didn’t have a way to send everyone a message, to arrange meetings, to discuss ideas for the park. Group messaging systems required the Internet. One day in early 2005, I was watching football back home in Cambridge, England, when suddenly the idea came to build a system that works off the mobile phone network instead of the Internet. The cell phone network is growing so fast, you can get coverage in the most unexpected places. If I could make the system simple enough, then anyone could use it, and people would find their own ways of benefiting from it.