Soon, study material on your cell

Surojit Mahalanobis / TNN / Nov 24, 2005, 23:32 IST

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Your study material will soon be in your mobile phone handset. You can study entire material beamed to your handset.

NEW DELHI: Those who argue lack of time for preparing for an examination and self-education would now lose even this pretext. Your study material will soon be in your mobile phone handset. You can attend teleconferencing, distance classroom lectures and study entire material beamed to your handset, all while on the move.
If the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) vice chancellor HP Dikshit can have his way, the facility will beem in your handset in about six months now onwards.
The idea first struck the IGNOU vice chancellor on November 17 at a World Summit at Tunis, when UN secretary-general Kofi Annan inaugurated an MIT techy's invention of high-tech laptop costing US$100 only. The MIT professor claimed to produce about 100 such laptops in near future and by the end of the year a few thousands of them.

The strength of the MIT professor is reportedly the new very heavy satellites launched in the orbit, which is conducive to create fastes modes of communication in mass production, which eventually will bring down the costs.
According to reports, the professor is at work on an ambitious programme ^ to produce the laptop in millions of pieces very soon by next year.
"I am trying to get in touch with the MIT professor," said Dikshit. "We've got our future."

Like the MIT professor, Dikshit is drawing strength from the Indian Satellite Research Organisation's (ISRO) ongoing project of Insat 4A series of satellites with 12 KU band transponders. Ignou, a stake-holder in the ISRO project, has pinned hopes for the fastest mode to "reach the most unreached", said Diskhit.
The Insat 4A satellites have higher technology than Edusat which is already in the orbit. The new satellites are planned to beam educational programmes through the Direct to Home (DTH) technology launched in the country last year.
In its current edition, the Edusat has 6 KU band transponders and 6 extended C band transponders. It doesn't support DTH at present. The Insat 4A series satellites will support the DTH technology.
These heavy satellites will bring down the cost of mobile phones even with capacity to accommodate heavy files. These apart, the handsets will also enable the owner to attend teleconferencing sessions, distance classroom lectures, receive disseminated photographs ^ all while he or she is mobile.

At the concluding session of the International Council of Distance Education conference on Wednesday, Dikshit said, the university think-tank are serious about the idea. "It's possible", nodded Dikshit at an exclusive to the Times News Network. "The cost of both, a mobile phone and its usage, is becoming lower fast, even as its tech-capacity growing. With about 760 million people across the buying mobile phones every year, we can afford to give the idea a try."

Considering the time people spend on mobile phones, and the kind of space a new-tech handset offers today to accommodate a pocket radio, pocket PC, Internet connectivity, remote television, SMS, e-mails and others, the tech-savvy the Ignou VC can afford to keep his fingers crossed.

A stat says, about 24 million buy a handset in India every year. That's five mobile phones every minute. By the current fiscal-end, about 70 million Indians will talk on mobile loops, which are aleady closer to people's hearts than the landline phones. Low-priced but quality Ignou education is in for striking richer dividend soon.

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