The Weather Channel App is targeted at developing nations prone to natural disasters.
IBM says that this feature means that phones will keep on sending and receiving weather alerts even during natural disasters such as earthquakes or severe storms.
IBM is increasing its investments in the developing world.
American multinational IBM has launched a mobile application that will provide Kenyans with weather updates even when cellular networks are down.
The Weather Channel App is targeted at developing nations prone to natural disasters. It is available in Kenya and 21 other countries.
It utilises “mesh technology” which allows smartphones to continue communicating with each other even when there is no mobile network signal.
Each smartphone is turned into a node that stores and passes on a message to nearby devices.
IBM says that this feature means that phones will keep on sending and receiving weather alerts even during natural disasters such as earthquakes or severe storms, when mobile networks are incapacitated.
“The mesh network technology links other nearby phones to extend the signal to help keep citizens connected and informed, and in the most severe conditions, might even help save a life,” said IBM in a statement.
The firm said it was collecting data from national and international meteorological authorities to feed the application. The technology has been developed by the company’s subsidiary, the Weather Company.
IBM is increasing its investments in the developing world. It has established its first research lab in Africa in Nairobi, studying how technology can be used to resolve such issues as Nairobi’s chronic traffic jams.
The global tech firm recently said it was experimenting with using blockchain technology to address public service delivery challenges in the education and health sectors.
Mesh technology is becoming more relevant as smartphone access extends to developing nations. During the 2010 Haiti earthquake, mesh technology was used to build a disaster-proof wireless network.\
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It has also been used in political contexts. In 2014, protestors in Hong Kong used FireChat, a messaging app that relies on mesh technology. Through FireChat they were able to bypass cellular and Internet networks that could be susceptible to government interference. Mesh technology has also been used in Egypt to bypass the heavily government-controlled Internet networks.
Unlike regular cellular and Internet networks, mesh technology does not get weighed down by heavy traffic. In fact, the more users on a mesh network, the more efficient it becomes.
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