Mobilephones are making life better for people in remote, underserved areas of India. They no longerhave to walk kilometers to public call offices to use a telephone—an essentialtool for buying and selling goods based on the latest market data, gettingcredit from lenders and other commonplace activities. So far, most of thebenefits have come from one of the phone's simplest features: voice calls.
With more than 250 million mobile users and 6 million new ones addedeach month, India now has the "teledensity" to supportmore-sophisticated mobile technologies, which could have a big impact on Indiansociety and the economy in the next few years. Theseinclude "voice broadcast" services that would let a truck ownerinform residents of a village about a scheduled trip to the city, or doctorsannounce the availability of polio vaccinations. A more complex systemwould allow a small business, say, to keep track of shipments. What's holdingup these services is the lack of mobile banking.
Withurban markets nearing saturation, global giants like Nokia are nowlooking to appeal to the hinterlands. Reliance Communications, which hasoffered Internet service over its mobile phones since 2002, is sponsoring acontest this year for developers to invent new rural services. "We want toreally take advantage of our mobile platform, our data network, and our abilityto provide the mobile Internet experience to bridge the digital divide,"says Mahesh Prasad, president of applications and development.
Severalsmall companies are at work on mobile banking for small businesses. NewDelhi-based ekgaon technologies has developed a system for trackingtransactions made by so-called Self Help Groups, which pool members' money andoffer small loans to poor people. The system uses a camera-equipped mobilephone to scan forms and a voice-recognition system. A.Little.World, a mobilesoftware business in Mumbai, has developed a microfinance and payment systemthat lets customers perform banking transactions through a local agentaffiliated with a bank. Customers get a secure electronic identity via phone orsmart card; agents take deposits and dispense cash. Biometric data, such asfingerprints, make the phones and smart cards more secure than paper-basedbanking. A.Little.World has extended such services to about 400 localbusinesses acting as agents. And it's now working on a national rolloutwith the State Bank of India—the biggest player in the rural market.Meanwhile, ekgaon, whose partners include CARE, WorldVision and the World Bank,has a pilot transaction-management system for 10,000 Self Help Groups, withplans to extend it to 14 Indian states.
Mobilebanking services can reduce the cost of transactions for loans and otherservices—the main obstacle to providing banking for the poor—by as much asthree quarters, according to ekgaon's chief operating officer Rohit Magotra. Mobiletransactions could have an even broader effect applied to India'ssocial-security payments and public-distribution system, which sells essentialgoods to the poor at subsidized rates. By March 2008, people in 8,000 villagesin Andhra Pradesh will get their benefits zapped via mobile phone totheir smart cards, which they may eventually use instead of cash to buy goodsat the ration shop. A.Little.World, which is building the system, says anationwide service could help reduce fraud in the public-distributionsystem. It would also mean going from a bankless world to a cashless one, maybeeven faster than America or Europe.
1. Which one of the following statements is NOT true of the “voice broadcast” services?
[A] The services are oriented to the needs of people in rural area.
[B] The services are based on sophisticated mobile technologies.
[C] The services have great impact on the Indian society.
[D] The services are on the horizon by implementing mobile banking.
2. Golbal giants like Nokia are turning their focus on the rural areas because_____
[A] they want to bridge the digital gap between urban and rural areas.
[B] people in the rural areas are becoming prosperous and are eager to take advantage of the motile technology.
[C] they have almost exhausted the potential of urban markets.
[D] the technologies for services of rural areas are now well developed.
3. The system developed by A. Little. World. is more secure than the traditional banking because _____
[A] it adopts the fingerprints as the security data.
[B] it uses a voice-recognition system.
[C] it give each customer an electronic ID.
[D] it uses a biometric recognition system.
4. Mobile banking services have the following advantages except_____
[A] reducing the cost of transactions.
[B] preventing fraud in public service.
[C] making the poor’s life more convenient.
[D] diminishing the function of cash.
5. The passage is mainly about_____
[A] the use of Mobile Phone in India.
[B] India’s mobile technologies.
[C] Mobile banking services in India.
[D] the development of mobile transactions.
[答案]
1. C
2. C
3. D
4. D
5. C
>>>查看2021考博英语阅读理解模拟题汇总
注：以上信息来源网络，如有侵权，请联系客服删除
