March 1, 2007
SMS Server for Rural Farms in India
In India, 60% of the population are in agriculture, and most farms are small, with only 1 to 3 acres of land, writes VoIP News, reporting from the Emergency Telephone Conference where Sean Blagsvedt, Head of Program Management and Advanced Prototyping, MSR India and Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Associate Researcher, MSR India took the stage..
"Veeraraghavan runs through a pilot study that has been running for the past five months, which provided small Indian farmers with SMS-enabled smartphones hooked to PCs. This improved the farms productivity by providing harvesting information immediately, as opposed to over a period of 15 to 20 days. He says that the SMS was extremely useful to the farmers, and at a low cost of about $159 per farmer per year.
He says farmers were in disbelief at the program’s ability to provide exact and precise information. The study was such a success that other farmers in the area where the study took place requested the service. They successfully replaced a PC-based system with a cheaper, more accessible, SMS-based Mobile Phone System."
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