2. APPLICATIONS OF MOBILE PHONES
The wireless technology and mobile phones are becoming an integral part of everyday life and are changing the way one connects and interacts with the world. Mobile phones have wide variety of applications. Already mobile devices have made significant impact on banking, tourism (Web GIS), and health services. An innovative application of mobile phones in agriculture is made where Indian farmers are using low-cost water pump activation system called ‘Nano Ganesh’ developed by Tata Teleservices. A cell phone application with modem allows farmers to remotely access their irrigation pumps and to check availability of power to their irrigation systems and turn on/off the pumps. Doctors are also using mobiles to access electronic medical record, view medical images, access drug information, and take notes. Latest is mobile real-time remote patient monitoring and an iPhone application, iStethoscope to monitor heart rates of patients on the go. Already mobile phones are no longer a luxury, but a necessity not only for simple voice or text communication, but
also for accessing the internet. Such connectivity seems to be the wave of the future.
As per International Telecommunication Union1 (ITU) ICT facts and figures, 2011, there are about 6 billion mobile-cellular subscribers. Mobile-broadband subscriptions have grown 45% annually over the last four years and today there are twice as many mobile-broadband as fixed broadband subscriptions
(Fig.1).