"Federal Court Shuts Down Pay As You Go Wireless"

From slashdot today:

self assembled struc writes "BCGI has been found guilty of infringing on pay-as-you-go wireless patents owned by Freedom Wireless. This means that cellular providers who use BCGI pay-as-you-go billing systems must immediately stop selling new service. For the next 90 days, as they wind down their service, they will have to pay Freedom Wireless 2.5 cents per airtime minute used PER CUSTOMER. This heralds a farewell to Cingular's Go Phone and Sprint-Nextel's Boost services, both powered by BCGI."

If this holds up, potential increases in pricing for pre-paid services would disproportionately affect poor people, who rely on such services at a much higher rate in the US.

Cell Phone Use Changes Life in Africa

From the Y! news article of the same name:

Amina Harun, a 45-year-old farmer, used to traipse around for hours looking for a working pay phone on which to call the markets and find the best prices for her fruit. Then cell phones changed her life.

"We can easily link up with customers, brokers and the market," she says, sitting between two piles of watermelons at Wakulima Market in Kenya's capital.

Harun is one of a rapidly swelling army of wired-up Africans — an estimated 100 million of the continent's 906 million people. Another is Omar Abdulla Saidi, phoning in from his sailboat on the Zanzibar coast looking for the port that will give him the biggest profit on his freshly caught red snapper, tuna and shellfish.

Then there are South Africans and Kenyans slinging cell phones round the necks of elephants to track them through bush and jungle. And there's Beatrice Enyonam, a cosmetics vendor in Togo, keeping in touch with her husband by cell phone when he's traveling in the West African interior.

...

An industry that barely existed 10 years ago is now worth $25 billion, he says. Prepaid air minutes are the preferred means of usage and have created their own $2 billion-a-year industry of small-time vendors, the Celtel chief says. Air minutes have even become a form of currency, transactable from phone to phone by text message, he says.


And SMS for Ugandan farmers, including actual message content:

The CELAC Project seeks to collect and exchange this local agricultural content that works from the farmers. Dissemination methods include phone short text messages (SMS) - The project has a database of phone numbers to whom local agro-related information is sent every Monday. The category in the database is composed of farmers, Community Development Workers, Agricultural Extension Workers and any other interested person.

Followup: farmworker illnesses

This story from the last post hasn't gotten much press, but I did get some more information from one of our community liaisons in the area. The Fresno Bee (subscription required) has been one of the few newspapers to report on the incident ("Illness sends 17 laborers to S. Valley hospitals") and the followup investigation ("Field workers' illness still a mystery"). This all occurred at a Sunview Vineyards table grape farm in Tulare County. Aside from local media, several other organizations have been involved in the response and investigation to date: Tulare County Fire, Kern County Fire, Tulare Country Agricultural Commission, United Farm Workers, and the EPA. Ten days after the incident, "Tulare County agriculture and health officials still are puzzled over what could have caused 17 field workers to become ill."

Investigators probe Central Valley farm worker illnesses

Following from Central Valley Business Times (original content):

DELANO
September 29, 2005 8:15am

Tulare County investigators are trying to determine what caused 17 grape pickers to suddenly get sick on the job Wednesday in a vineyard in southern Tulare County.

Possible contamination of water in a container is suspected. There had been no pesticides used on the vineyard since Sept. 1, according to Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner Gary Kunkel.

Ambulances took seven workers to Delano Regional Medical Center while ten others were transported by private cars. All were treated and released or, in two cases, declined treatment. None was admitted.

More than 70 men and woman were working in the vineyard when the 17 complained of nausea and dizziness.