Message Phone
|
Imagine a world in
which every single person on the planet can afford to access the sum of all human
knowledge.
The Message Phone
will create that world.
Quick
slideshow follows,
or you can listen
to the 90 second slideshow on YouTube
I have entered the
Message Phone
in the Google contest to improve the world |
Translate this web site
to any of 50+ languages
with just 2 clicks (below)
Message Phone uses 10 of the
top 20 innovations of the past 30 years.
Message Phone will provide
internet access
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What is a
Message Phone? |
A Message Phone
is a device to solve a
problem
. .
(Picture is of a mockup made in 2008) |
Why
is it that..90% of the people live near cell phone
towers . . (green)
but only
60% have cell phones?
(orange) |
Answer:
Nearly
half
the world’s people
cannot afford
cell phones |
Cell phone used by people with high income
People with low income cannot afford
cellphones |
The
Message Phone
will bring cheap communications to
2 billion people
earning less than
$10 / day
|
Message phone
(blue region) will provide communications
affordable by people making less than $10 per day |
How
can the
Message Phone
be so
cheap? |
Answer:
Fewer -
far fewer
-
antennas
. . only
3
cover the whole Indian subcontinent |
Map of Indian subcontinent - showing that 3 antennas provide
coverage to
India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and most of Pakistan |
The
Message Phone
could improve the world for
2 billion people |
For more information
you can get to my web site
Search:
henry message
phone
Or go to:
www.henrylahore.com/messagephone
|
|
|
Entry into
Google Contest - which is
augmented with supporting references
The Message Phone is
a new technology to provide extremely cheap, reliable 2-way voice communications to 2 billion people around the world who cannot afford cell phones.
The Message Phone consists of an antenna complex and handsets. It provides
2-way voice communications, as does a cell phone, but not in real time(0).
The closest analogy is telephone voice messaging, where there is a slight delay in
reception. Message Phone messages can run from a few seconds to several hours,
and be stored in the handset. The Message Phone connects to other Message
Phones, cell phones, wired telephones, and the Internet.
The Message Phone is designed to be
cheap. A single Message Phone antenna site covers 3 million sq km - only three
Message Phone antennas would initially be needed to cover the
Indian subcontinent. By comparison, at least
7,000 (0.a) cell phone antennas
would be required for all of the Indian subcontinent - much more costly to build and maintain.
The Message Phone handset, not having a display, is ultra-cheap; it is also
unbreakable, simple-to-use, nearly radiation-free, solar-powered, has GPS, and
is completely voice-controlled. Costs are slashed even further by using the Internet to communicate non-local messages.
The Message Phone handset should cost 1/10th
that of the cell phone when amortized over 10 years (1).
The service cost should run 1/10th of cell phone for peak use, 1/50th for off-peak use.
The Message Phone can also be used to augment current cell phone service,
since there will be no dead zones, and messages can be sent and received in
rural areas, on airplanes, offshore, etc. Four antennas would cover the entire lower 48 US States plus southern Canada.
All the technologies for the Message Phone exist now (1.a), so development will be
easy and cheap. The meteor burst technology (2) it exploits has been in use for 40 years.
The Message Phone is expected to return its investment and be profitable
within a very few years, while providing incredibly affordable voice communications throughout the world.
What problem or issue does your idea address?
Over 1/3 of the people of the world (3) lack 2-way voice communications other
than face-to-face; many are essentially cut off from the world and from each
other, isolated without telephones or computers. Others have access to village phones (4),
but a single 5-minute conversation (5) on a village phone costs an entire
day’s wage (6) for 1 billion people. Most of the poor and ultra poor will never be
able to afford an individual cell phone. There are other areas, as in the rural
US, where people can afford cell phone service, but it is either no longer
available or not cost-effective to provide. Even the service that exists is
often spotty, with dead zones and poor service during storms and power outages.
Cell phones can’t be used in many situations, such as inside buildings, in
theaters, on airplanes, or at sea. Cell phones are only available in about 100 of 5000 languages (7).
If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
Literally billions of people would receive the benefits of voice
communications to raise their standard of living and connect to each other and
to the world. Individuals and families with an income as low as $1/2 to $1 per
day could learn, get entertainment, share ideas and friendship, job, market and
health information – all the benefits of modern-age communications, in their own
language. Providers would also profit.
The Message Phone is a viable alternative to the cell phone, enabling
extremely affordable 2-way communication for poor people, people lacking
electricity or cell phone service, and people who need reliable communications
at all times, such as elderly shut-ins, emergency and health workers, and the
military. It extends many of the benefits of the Internet (8)
(9) to people lacking
computers. The Message Phone is truly a case of "millions for billions" – a few
millions of dollars to benefit billions of people.
What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
Do an independent engineering feasibility study. Then secure a contractor to
prototype the communications software for the antenna site and the electronics
for the handset, specifying basic parameters and which country to use for the
initial test. The initial setup would require a single tower located at a site
having electricity, Internet connectivity, and easy physical access, probably
near an urban area. The team would also need to secure approval by the country’s
government to share appropriate radio frequencies (10). The contractor might explore
the possibility of having people donate time to develop some of the software to
save costs. The prototype should be completed in approximately 2 years for $2
million. More development is still needed prior to world-wide deployment. Costs
will be recovered by licensing to companies around the world.
Development should go smoothly, since 24 companies and several military
(11) organizations are using meteor burst communications technology now.
Describe the optimal outcome should your idea
be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?
The Message Phone has been developed and deployed throughout the world. It
has improved lives and helped raise the standard of living in many countries.
Many people’s incomes have risen (11a) so much that they can now afford cell phones,
though these still aren’t available in most rural areas. Google has 2 billion
more customers, listening to the Internet and using services such as Goog411.
The GDP of every developing country that has introduced Message Phones has risen
˝% each year (12) for every 10% increase in the population communicating
electronically. (Studies show this effect following introduction of cell
phones.) More people now remain in their villages, reducing the pressure on
swelling urban ghettoes. The educational level of the average 16-year-old has
improved. Artisans and farmers (13) sell their products around the world. Finally,
even people with cell phones have a cheap, reliable alternative to use any time, anywhere.
Henry Lahore: Electronic and Systems Engineer, retired from Boeing.
I did this to give back to society
more about me at my home page
Supporting references designated by
(xx) - which
could not fit in the Google word count limitation
0. Low bit rate speech
encoding is possible when encoding does not have to be in real time. (can look at more
data) and if it can use templates
While cell phones use approx 6,000 bits per second, Message Phone assumes
2,000 bits per second.
One patented device uses only 100 bits per second
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5305421.html
The Message Phone voice packets assume large latency between
packets, similar to the much faster
GPRS
described in WikiPedia
By not supporting real-time
conversations the Message Phone
I) Requires fewer bits to encode a
message
II) Can re-transmit a packet if there is
noise such as lightning during the original transmission
III) Can eliminate peaks needs by delaying
packets for a few seconds
IV) Reduces the need for the receiver to respond
immediately - a chance to think about a reply, smooth out the load on operators,
et.
0.a Original
submission to Google stated Message Phone coverage would be the same as 30,000
cell towers. Three Message Phone towers for the Indian Subcontinent actually
have the coverage of just 7,000 cell towers since the circles shown include
coverage of other countries and significant portions of the Indian Ocean.
1 Message phone can have a 10 year lifetime. It
would not have any display, keyboard, connector or hinge to break.
It will use a nanotech battery, the A123, which is
being developed for Black and Decker and for some electric automobiles.
http://www.a123systems.com/
1a) The
linked chart shows which technologies enable the Message Phone (example:
10,000 increase in cost effectiveness of computation in the part 20 years) and
the subsequent beneficial effects.
3 Four billion cell phones
anticipated to be in use by Dec 2008.
The biggest growth in mobile usage is coming from
China and India, which
have significantly higher GDP than other countries.
6 Cost of telephone and computer average is 6% of income
around the world, but varies from a minimum of 3% to a maximum of 15%
Many places, including
2003 ICT
FCC
Aug 2008
7
WikiPedia # of languages ,
Nokia in 2006 had cell phones in 68 languages but only 8 of the 14
official languages of India,
5% of languages (250) are spoken by 94% of the world Tone languages
difficult for Automatic Voice Recognition: Many of the 2,000 African languages
are tonal.
885 million
are illiterate 476 million of which are speaker of minority languages,
many of which have no written form anyway.
LG has
at least one voice controlled phone Fewer than 100 of languages/dialects are now supported by Voice Recognition software. Voice Recognition required a lot of work to support a new
language.
The Message Phone would use Utterance Recognition not Voice
Recognition.
Utterance Recognition is language independent and easily adjusts to the
gradual changes of the speech of a user. Example:
Patent application 2005
8 The Message Phone will permit users to request audio
versions of text from the web - similar to audio-only use of the web by the
blind. Users could request news, weather, sports, wikipedia files,
language lessons, phone numbers, health information, etc. Users could get audio
podcasts. Users could signup for a series of podcasts and news items as they
become available - such as disaster warnings. The users could also author audio
podcasts with their message phone. Such web access could be a free service, such
as those by Google, or could have embedded advertisements, or be paid for.
10. The TV 'White
spaces' are to be used. TV channel 2 or 3 - whichever is not used in an area.
The Message Phone modulation being significantly different
than both Digital and Analog TV will make greatly minimize possibility of
interference.
11a Message
Phone users can earn extra income incrementally by a variety of means: listen to
advertisements, translate message, provide answers, provide referral service,
etc.
Some of these are described by a service which started
operation in Kenya in 2009
www.txteagle.com
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