Cameroon Innovator Beats Internet Shutdown With SMS App

An anonymous reader shares a report: Hampered by an internet shutdown in Cameroon's troubled English-speaking regions in January 2017, Zuo Bruno, a young ethical hacker, was inspired to develop a car-tracking application using SMS. The application named Zoomed, whose adoption has been fast in Cameroon, is now on the verge of spreading across the continent.

Cameroon has been interrupting internet intermittently in those regions over the last 20 months in an attempt to stifle dissent following mass protests by English-speaking teachers and lawyers which erupted in 2016, first tampered with internet connectivity on Jan. 17, 2017. The internet shutdown lasted 94 days. The internet was again plug off in October same year, taking the duration of the shutdown to a record 230 days, according to Access Now.

[...] The Zoomed app does car-tracking based solely on specific SMS commands which gives it an advantage in a continent where shaky internet connection and low penetration makes internet-based solutions less effective. Bruno prices it at FCFA 120,000 ($ 212) and takes less than an hour to get the app installed into an auto-mobile.

Everything old is new again

[Etcetera]

Out of band control using simple 2G or 3G service for message passing was how quite a number of things worked back in the day. I'm sure this will be news to the Kids Today that don't remember life before pervasive LTE, but for commercial/industrial purposes this isn't especially new.

SMS is reliable enough in these situations, but for truer independence they'd want to look into mesh relays using other spectrum.

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[OzPeter]

Shssh .. don't tell them about GPRS

Re:

[Etcetera]

Yeah, I was almost going to bring that up :)

I wouldn't be surprised if AMPS is still out there somewhere...

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[williamyf]

Shssh .. don't tell them about GPRS

GPRS *IS* internet.

You must be thinking about WAP on an SMS bearer, as an OLD example of Something-Over-SMS

https://www.eetimes.com/docume... [eetimes.com]

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[ShanghaiBill]

An "ethical hacker" is guaranteed to be neither.

He is ethical because he is helping English speakers in a majority French speaking country. If he was helping French speakers in an English speaking country, he would be a terrorist.

As a former resident of Cameroon

[retroworks]

I think this is pretty typical of the "tinkerer's blessing", the period when emerging markets repair/hacker/TechSector is the best job available for the smartest and most honest workers. Singapore did it, S.Korea, Guangdong, and if you go back a ways, Japan. Countries earning under $3k per capita per year jump to 10K per person per year in about a decade, and its when guys like this figure out ways to protect the cars of the wealthy, set up hospital blood banks, rig cell phone towers, etc. They create the

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[owenferguson]

hah! came to say the same thing.

Ethical hacker?

[owenferguson]

Hacking isn't a registered profession. Thus, there is no professional "code of Ethics" for hackers to follow, and it's impossible to be an "Ethical Hacker." Please stop feeding the trolls who sell "ethical hacker" bullshit course-ware.

New???

[Hank the Lion]

Why do they present this as an innovation?
About 8 to 10 years ago, I bought a GPS tracker with exactly this functionality.
You could send it an SMS with some command, and it would send back its current location.
No internet necessary (although it could also send regular updates over GPRS).
Cost? About $50 on DealExtreme.