(Column) - Close at the heels of the WiMax incident during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, there is more news that wireless technology is helping people to a better life. Inhabitants in Africa had to trek for kilometers on end to find a working telephone so they could get to know the prices of what they wanted and/or to communicate to their family members.

A lot of things (communication being one) that we take for granted in the developed world were considered sheer luxury as early as two years ago in most of the developing and undeveloped countries of the world.

An innovative use that Kenyans found for cell phones is elephant tracking. They take modified cell phones with a unique ID, tie them to elephants and later program them to send signals at set intervals. This has led to significant cost cutting in tracking elephants, thereby saving valuable financial resources for the government and wildlife agencies.

According to last year’s figures, 74 percent of the total phone connections in Africa were cell phones, and an estimated 100 million people out of the 900 million are already onto one cell phone network or another. Manufacturers say they misjudged the market and based their surveys on GDPs and landline penetration, but what they forgot to count in was that setting up landlines is far more expensive than setting up a cell phone site. Also, it takes a long time for the bureaucracy to move in, which causes frustrating delays for customers.

This massive connectivity drive has been possible in Africa because they have been able to leapfrog existing technology and its limitations to go straight to the latest technologies that have been tried and perfected by the western world.

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