An absolutely brilliant idea – the Singapore government (with help from Nokia and MobileOne) is taking in peoples’ old SMS (short message)-capable phones and recycling them by distributing them to needy deaf people, giving them 500 free text messages a month for six months.
Of course with my cynic’s hat on I wonder if this isn’t also a cynical ploy by the telcos to get people who hadn’t previously thought of using mobiles hooked on text messaging. And it won’t be long before we have complete saturation of mobile phones, in Europe anyway, so this may not be necessary in a few years. But in the meantime this is an example we should be urging our governments and telcos to follow. Even better – the telcos should offer the deaf a special low-cost flat rate for SMS…
