Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen from the Adelaide's Flinders University is developing a mobile phone (a.k.a. cell phone) communications system that can work without any mobile tower to communicate between mobile phones in close range. This technology, named as 'The Serval Project' was inspired by the Haiti earthquake in 2010, which disrupted all the mobile networks due to failure of mobile towers. This makes the rescue and relief operations extremely difficult in such disaster hit areas. Dr. Gardner-Stephen has got a 400,000 dollar fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation to develop this technology to the product stage.
This technology allows mobile phones to freely communicate with each other to create a virtual network where no network cover exists. This would also enable to establish limited mobile communication network in remote areas where coverage of a mobile service provider is not available. Special software being developed based on this technology would soon be released free for the public. So we can hope that soon we will be able to call other phones in the range for free where there is no mobile network exists.
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