This Week in Global Mobile | April 22, 2011

At times it's difficult to keep pace with the latest global mobile developments. I hope this selection of news stories from the past week will help you navigate the growing global network of connectivity:

  • Iran announced its own “halal” Internet that “conforms to Islamic principles” and operates parallel to the World Wide Web in order to increase the presence of Farsi on the Internet.
  • Global Voices reported a great story of a Chilean nurse who used a simple tweet to spur the Twitter community into action, expediting the transport of five essential organs to Santiago.
  • An interesting article in Flathead Beacon explored how 21st-century technology is enabling entrepreneurship and innovation in rural America.
  • The Ugandan government asked some Internet service providers to block access to Facebook and Twitter amid protests over rising costs in the country.
  • U.S. Senators Kerry and McCain introduced a Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights [PDF] in order to protect online consumers and ensure digital information collectors adhere to strict policies.
  • President Obama and Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg co-hosted a digital town hall, fielding questions from a live and online audience and live-streaming the event.
  • Saturday’s presidential elections in Nigeria benefited from the mobile app ReVoDa, which allowed Nigerians to report incidents from their polling units using their mobile devices.
  • The Facebook Page of Fort Bragg was used by the U.S. Army to keep up-to-the-minute information about emergency response following last week’s deadly tornadoes.
  • Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom introduced a new Internet browsing service for home consumers that charges per minute or per second, rather than on a subscription basis.
  • The U.S. plans to provide $28 million in grants to help Web activists in countries with oppressive regimes, according to Bloomberg.
  • Asian mobile operators faced lower average revenue per user in 4Q-2010, lending credence to the concern that multi-SIM ownership and sharing among consumers might challenge operator’s growth, reported ABI Research.
  • Amazon announced a partnership with over 11,000 local libraries in the United States, allowing patrons to borrow e-books to read on their Kindles.
  • The University of Cape Town teamed up with Samsung to develop Africa-specific mobile phone applications in a new facility aimed at satisfying the needs of people in the continent.