Mobile technology makes this world a better place.

Did you know that, despite the fact that for most people the Internet has become a necessity, is it still a luxury for a large number of people? According to the latest report from McKinsey & Company, about 40% of the world's population lives outside the coverage of mobile networks.

The company Opera is strongly concerned to unite the whole world. In the meantime, let's consider how we and the rest of the MWC members have been able to improve mobile technology around the world.

IBM: Ebola Control via SMS or Calls


')
At the height of the Ebola epidemic in Central and West Africa, one of the most difficult tasks was to provide people with an easier way to report the first signs and symptoms of the disease, and where the infected are.

Thanks to mobile technology, social workers could communicate with patients in order to provide timely assistance, as well as to find out where the need for resources is most acute.

IBM, together with the government of Sierra Leone and local network providers, launched a mechanism for collecting data through calls and messages. After that, the reports were sent to the IBM laboratory and marked on the map.

Opera: Cheaper Internet due to data compression

The market today is saturated with a large number of cheap phones, but for users in some countries the cost of mobile data remains disproportionately expensive relative to local income. The rest is difficult to combine concepts such as owning a smartphone and the ability to be online as much as you want.

In Brazil, for example, a 500 MB tariff plan costs $ 35, and an employee with a minimum payment needs to work 3.5 days to afford it. In Norway, where Opera’s headquarters is located, a tariff plan with a limit of 10 times more costs for an employee with a minimum salary of only 2 hours of work.

To help reduce the cost of mobile data, Opera launched the Opera Max project at MWC last year. Opera Max is an application for saving data, which significantly reduces the use of mobile data by all Android applications, including photo and video applications. It also affects hidden applications that download additional data, and determines when users are outside their normal network. Thanks to the free Opera Max application, users can use their tariff plans 50% more. Opera Max is currently available in many countries, including Brazil, and their list continues to grow. To check if Opera Max is available in your country, go to Google Play.

Internet.org: Get free access to health information

Everyone agrees that the best that the Internet has given us is more extensive access to information. Today, mobile technology helps organizations provide the most important information to people in low-income regions.

Internet.org, a project of Facebook and its partners, including Opera, has launched the Internet.org application, which provides users with access to health, employment, and local information sites without charging data transfer fees.



Information and a list of sites are created separately for each country and are published in the local language. This service is currently available in countries such as India, Ghana, Colombia, Kenya, Tanzania and Indonesia. In India, users can access Internet.org directly through Opera Mini.