With mobile phones being the technology of choice among lower-income Jamaicans, new research cautions that illiteracy means that many are unable to send even a SMS text message, which threatens usage of the device as an increasingly popular tool for economic activity.

Dr Hopeton Dunn, director of the Telecommunications Policy & Management Programme at the Mona School of Business at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona, which is sponsored by Digicel, tips handsets as the 'bridging technology' that will introduce lower-income Jamaicans to browsing the Internet, besides offering valuable economic functions. These include banking and commerce via SMS ranging from selling phone credit to goods and basic subsidiary businesses, including selling phones, accessories and credit and unlocking phones.

According to Dunn's research, more than nine out of ten lower-income Jamaicans are mobile phone users, while they are now more handsets than people in the country according to his research published in two reports, which were presented at a seminar, 'Ringtones of Opportunity: People, Poverty and the Possibilities of Mobile Telephony in Jamaica' held at the UWI on Friday. His conclusions were based on a survey of 1,182 low-income respondents from both rural and urban areas across all parishes in Jamaica.
He said that mobiles now offered greater business opportunities for lower-income Jamaicans beyond what he termed, "Idle chatter".

"It is becoming clear to us that it is not the primary purpose of the acquisition of the mobile, that people are increasingly concerned about using the phone for business, setting up links and contacts that they can call upon subsequently."

But Dunn reported that the received wisdom of texting being preferred as a cheaper way to communicate was instead confounded by rates of illiteracy in poor communities and remains primarily an application favoured by middle class users.

"With an official 20 per cent illiteracy rate and a much higher real illiteracy rate, it could be a serious impediment to the application and some of the mobile technology for work benefit that we would like to see," Dunn told Business Observer.

While SMS text messaging has evolved between users with its own language and abbreviations, illiterate users will be more challenged when using more complicated applications and especially if they are to transition onto browsing the Internet via their mobiles, with persons required to type the address of websites before they want to surf.

All this could make depressing reading for the Internet entrepreneurs in Jamaica. Email will be even more fraught, as it demands greater literacy than text messaging. Dunn places Internet penetration at below 20 per cent of the population and despite government's nascent e-Learning project for schools many teachers remain computer illiterate.

However, local software developers have already picked up on the challenge. Also addressing the seminar was Damion Daley of Software Architects whose company has recently partnered with Joey Issa's Cool Biz and the XSJ affiliate network - that includes 3,000 persons selling phone credit - to launch Mobile Money, which allows people to carry out financial transactions via their mobile phone.

As in South Africa, where similar technology has been deployed, it is hoped that the technology will introduce more poor people into the banking sector - Mobile Money customers can deposit and withdraw money using a commercial bank.

Daley chose to work with SMS, believing it to be the technology with the widest reach and range of applications and claims to be undaunted by the challenge of illiteracy.

"That's why I am trying to work on literacy tools!" said the 27-year-old, who is about to launch his 'Duncebat' website that will teach literacy and general knowledge using Jamaican-themed content.

"It's a version of the Hangman game, where players fill in blank spaces representing individual letters, with all Jamaican letters and at the end of the round, if they get answers right or wrong, then it will lead them to websites where they can get that information - like Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia, which allows users to upload and update entries)."

Cellular service providers are also aware of the challenge. Troy Cockings, product manager for Value Added Services at Cable & Wireless, is currently working on two cellular applications: One that teaches users how to use SMS and the other, which needs a web-enabled phone, guides them through literacy lessons using text, voice and images.

"You can imagine that this would be ideal for those tough-faced guys who don't necessarily want to go to a classroom and would be ashamed of people knowing that they can't read or write but they can send messages over short code and get a message back that allows them to download the application," said Cocking.

Dunn remains optimistic that the mobile phone, besides its core use as a telecommunications device, can drive telecommunications technology use in Jamaica.

"The phone is providing young people with an opportunity to experiment with technology in a way that they were not able to experiment with technology before - that they don't have laptop, they don't have a PC and therefore their man contact with this burgeoning world of technology is simply through the mobile phone."

Story taken from the Jamaica Observer Observations blog: www.jamaicaobserver.com/blog

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