Sunday, January 02, 2005
Mobile phones in tsunami aftermath
From: "Moderator: ICT of Bangladesh Yahoo Group"
Date: Sat Jan 1, 2005 12:14 am
Subject: Mobile phone plays valuable role in wake of tsunami disaster
By making it possible to share information quickly and to quickly raise large sums in relief aid, the mobile telephone has played a valuable role in the Asian seaquake disaster.
By making it possible to share information quickly and to quickly raise large sums in relief aid, the mobile telephone has played a valuable role in the Asian seaquake disaster.
In the immediate aftermath of the towering tsunami waves that have so far known to have taken some 125,000 lives, the phones enabled survivors to let friends and families know they were alive.
The Czech government sought the help of the country's three mobile phone companies to send text messages to the phones of about 90 Czech tourists who remain unaccounted for. The operators were establishing whether the phones were active when the wave struck, and whether they have since been reactivated elsewhere.
The move was "primarily aimed at individual tourists, with whom contact has so far proved impossible," said Deputy Foreign Minister Pavel Svoboda.
Hardly had the news of the catastrophe begun to circulate around the world, than the phones found a new role.
In Italy, which has one of the highest rates of mobile phone ownership in the world, operators made a single number available for donations and sent text or voice messages to their customers appealing to them to send one euro.
"A euro (1.35 dollars) is not very much, that's true, but people are responding enthusiastically," said Anna Fraschetti, a spokeswoman for public Italian radio and television network RAI, which is sponsoring the operation along with the private Mediaset network.
"It also enables young people to participate," she said. "If all the 50 million people who own a portable phone in Italy sent one euro, that would add up to a nice sum."
Quicker, more spontaneous and less costly than a bank transfer, the millions of small cash payments via mobile phones in Italy amounted to 14 million euros in the first five days after the disaster.
Generosity also spread like wildfire in the Netherlands, where any telephone user could transfer 1.5 euros to a special Asia fund simply by tapping out the word "give" on his or her keypad and sending a text message to the number 2020.
Similar operations were under way in Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey.
France Telecom's mobile phone subsidiary Orange said it would put a system in place Monday, enabling customers to send donations to the Red Cross.
In Germany, the organizers of New Year's festivities at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin asked participants to send a text message that automatically transferred 2.65 euros (3.6 dollars) to the account of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF.
For the benefit of the million people attending the festivities, the number to call was displayed on large TV screens.
Some operators, like Norway's Telenor and Netcom, Britain's Vodaphone and Sweden's TeliaSonera, donated part of their earnings to the aid effort, and Telenor said it would allow customers still in Thailand to call home or receive calls for free.
TeliaSonera said it broadcast a number to enable people to send donations during a special broadcast Saturday, a day of mourning.
With 60 confirmed dead and 3,500 missing, Sweden is one of the European countries most hard hit by the catastrophe.
Source:
AFP
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