I recently just got back from going on a trip from Tallahassee, FL to Greenville, South Carolina. I went to Greenville to visit my dad who lives up there. While I was visiting my dad I was also working for him. He is the general manager of a BMW dealership so he was having me deliver and pick up cars around the area. I also took the opportunity to visit some friends for a few days who happened to be about an hour away from where I was located in Greenville at Tugaloo State Park on lake Hartwell in northern Georgia. All in all it was a great trip, which involved a lot of driving and having to find different roads and businesses that were not familiar. Most of the driving up to South Carolina took me through backwoods and on many roads that would be hard to navigate without the availability of GPS. I used my cell phone for as a GPS unit on the trip and when I was delivering cars I would use the GPS to locate the dealerships that I was going to. This trip made me realize how important and convenient having a cell phone with mobile internet is. Without my iPhone I would not have been able to get through the roads and find the places I had to find without the turn by turn directions that it offers. It took me until the last leg of my trip on the way back home for me to encounter my first problem. I was driving and my phone lost service. I was unable to locate where I was and ended up getting lost for about 5 minutes. It was funny to think to me that people in certain towns are not able to get certain cell phone companies due to the lack of service in their location. It got me thinking that this is a great example of the digital divide. The reason being that many of these towns are not up to date on technology is because it is simply not offered where they are located. Sure there are different providers but many of these places are not covered by anything more than just basic cellular service. Cell phone companies are advertising their 3G and some even 4G coverage. If one were to read the fine print they would see that the faster speeds are only offered in larger cities, but the services are expanding. In India the cell phone creator Ericsson is attempting to close the digital divide by providing not just the urban areas but the rural areas as well. This is not just mobile internet, cable and regular high speed internet are also services that are often times not easily provided to small towns and back woods of the world.
I have attached a picture that was on Wikipedia, which is a graph that I think does a great job to show the number of mobile phone subscribers in different countries around the world. I also attached a link that explains about Ericsson and the urban-rural digital divide.
http://www.ciol.com/Technology/Networking/Interviews/3GHSPA-can-help-bridge-urban-rural-digital-divide/117457/0/
Riding in BMW's for work? Really? Sounds horrible! Lol, just kidding! I'm glad you had a great time on your vacation. But the GPS on the phone is as perfect as it gets. Here's a short stroy for you, my brother and his best friend went to visit Atlanta with what they thought was a "working" GPS system and was sad to realize their GPS system was malfunctioning. Thanks to the BlackBerry GPS app that was added to his phone, they were saved by technology. They used that GPS all week while they were in Atlanta and came across no issues. I never downloaded that app to my BB because I don't go on many trips, but you never know when it'll come in handy so it is definitely one of my apps as we speak!
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