Cloud Phone

It costs 10 to 20 cents to activate. It basically lets groups of people share a single phone, while still maintaining individual phone numbers and private accounts. The "Cloud Phone" was presented by a company called Movirtu Limited earlier this month at the Pop! Tech conference in Maine, an event focused on new ideas in technology that benefit society at large.

There are over a billion people who use mobile phone services today but do not own a mobile phone handset. They borrow phones or they share a phone amongst family or they'll go to a street corner and buy a single phone call. The cloud phone allows people to have their own identity -- to log in and log out of other people's mobile phones, just like you or I would log in and log out of our e-mail account. By allowing them to log-in, they access a service -- which is called the cloud phone. After activating the user number, the call costs are the same as the existing tariffs on the prepaid network. Users can access their accounts from any phone. All they have to do is type in their special PIN code, and instantly make or receive calls under their own number.

So how is this different from maintaining a SIM card without a phone? First, the cheapest phone for SIM card would cost $20 to $25, and for someone who works for $1 a day that's six months savings. Second, it's not convenient to go through the trouble of taking the phone apart, replacing the SIM, turning it back on, etc. Third, it's very easy to loose a SIM card.

This amazing technology is already accessed today by thousands of people; however it's not as easy as was expected. Mobile operators are demanding profitable business models. 

For further reading please visit http://www.movirtu.com/.

Video: Nigel Waller - CEO : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pykQabzlbik

References:

1. Meet The 20-cent Cloud Phone
2. http://www.poptech.org/
3. http://www.switched.com