Meteorological Department Goes Mobile For Farmers – Fresh Room For MVAS?
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One of the major challenges rural VAS is facing today, making information easily accessible to farmers. Useful information puts a farmer in an exponential position and helps him get more profit from all the hard work that his profession requires. To make his job easier, there have been steps taken to resolve his ramifications. WATBlog has been extremely passionate about covering news around the digital space affecting the hinterland, and will continue to do so. Since there’s still a huge room for mobile and internet in the rural areas of India which can not only prove beneficial to service providers, but also help farmers and others oblivious about the recent developments.
As of late, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) joined hands with one of the wireless solution providers of Mobile entertainment and Value Added Services, Handygo Ltd. This tie up will help farmers gather information about the climate affecting the growth of crops. Not just the regular forecast, but also the opinions of in-house agricultural experts on various crops. The advice on farming inputs will be received via mobile through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), even the Meteorological forecasts suitable or unsuitable for agriculture.
These Handygo services will be available in 21 districts of Punjab and 20 districts of Haryana, and now plans to focus on 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh; Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Maharashtra. Extensive research done by their scientists after the signing of the memorandum of understanding with the IMD, will be used to facilitate the needs of farmers and also to avoid their adversity.
The information gathered for the betterment of agriculture, scientists will simplify the data so that it is easily graspable. Farmers need to dial 55678 on mobile phones to receive required information at Re 1 a minute. The service will be available with local telecom service providers tied up with Handygo.
The rural market being identified so well by the Indian Mobile Services as well as the handset vendors, they do not miss a single chance to get themselves on the forefront. With rural mobile market increasing, there is a huge market for Mobile VAS. The rise in numbers in the rural areas clearly indicates the reach of technology even in the remote areas and how rural people are accepting a new technology. But, effective implementation of IVR and making services of that sort affordable plus getting local information makes up a serious task in rural VAS.
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what is the source of this post?
the source is given on the text “joined hands”