Making it possible to be informed even on the most basic of phones

Oct 25, 2013 12:58 GMT  ·  By

One of Wikipedia's biggest goals is to expand its reach. That may sound strange coming from one of the biggest sites in the world. But even if everyone on the internet used Wikipedia, there would still be more than four billion people out there who can't reach it because, obviously, they don't have an internet connection.

Almost everyone though has a phone. In many places, it is the only piece of technology people own.

Wikipedia has been working on getting more information to people using basic phones or who only have access to the mobile web, via the Wikipedia Zero initiative.

Wikipedia Zero is a stripped down version of the site (there are no images, for example) that is offered for free, i.e. it doesn't count towards mobile data caps, in partnership with carriers.

Now, Wikipedia is pushing even further by making it possible to access the information even without an internet connection.

"This partnership with Airtel will help provide Wikipedia access to 70 million new users in sub-saharan Africa, starting in Kenya," Wikipedia announced.

"One exciting aspect of this partnership is that we are reaching a group of people we’ve never been able to reach before: mobile phone customers who don’t have internet access," it added.

"We are testing a service to allow access to Wikipedia articles via text message. It can work with any phone, even the most basic feature phone. You don’t even need an application," it said.

The system is not particularly hard to use. Users send a message to a fixed number and submit their query. They then get the option to choose between the pages that fit their queries.

Once they select a subject, they get a list of the section headers in the article for that subject. They'll then be able to select any portion of the article that interests them.

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Users can pick between the sections of an article
They then receive the information they asked for
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