Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD)

See the following -

Dedicated Engineering Team in South Africa Deploys Open Source Tools, Save Lives

In 2006, a groundbreaking TED talk used statistics to reveal surprising insights about the developing world, including how many people in South Africa have HIV despite free and available anti-retroviral drugs. Gustav Praekelt, founder of Praekelt.org, heard this TED talk and began tenaciously calling a local hospital to convince them to start an SMS program that would promote anti-retrovirals. The program that resulted from those calls became txtAlert—a successful and widely recognized mobile health program that dramatically improves medical appointment adherence and creates a free channel for patients to communicate with the hospital...

Two-Thirds Of The World’s Mobiles Are Dumb Phones. Meet The Company Getting Them Online

Sruthijith KK | Quartz | June 9, 2014

And yet U2opia mobile, a Singapore-based company founded by Indian entrepreneurs, has catapulted to 17 million users in 36 countries as a result. To understand why, you have to unlearn Facebook—its blue background, viral videos, photo uploads—as you know it. And put yourself in the position of someone who has never been on the internet before. Read More »