Back in 2005, all Ken Banks wanted was a simple way to use his cellphone to reach the community around South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Little did he know that his brainchild would help monitor nation-wide elections in Nigeria, provide market price information to fisherman in Indonesia, and just last week, become a finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge for socially responsible projects and initiatives.

Of the estimated 5 billion cell phone users, most of them live in low and middle income countries, and many will never have access to a laptop. But they text – a lot

In the six years since the UK native first developed Frontline SMS, an open source software that turns a laptop into an internet-free communication hub, it has been used in more than 50 countries by thousands of organizations.

For remote parts of the developing world that have a mobile signal but hardly anything else, the simplicity of Frontline SMS is what makes it so useful. All it takes is a computer, a cell phone, and at least one bar of phone coverage. The setup allows such minimally equipped sort of ad hoc bulletin board created by virtue of simple texts.

No internet? No problem.

Here’s how it works: After downloading and installing the Frontline SMS software to a computer (it works on Windows, Mac or Linux), you use a USB cable to attach a cell phone or GSM modem with a SIM card. With Frontline SMS open and running, you can then create groups of contacts and send them messages. Any text they send back will appear on screen and be added to a database of messages.

“We wanted to take advantage of the explosive growth of mobile phones,” said grants manager Ryan Jones, who was in New York for the Challenge. “To take that potential, and deliver it to the NGOs and non-profits facing infrastructural challenges.”

Of the estimated 5 billion cell phone users, most of them live in low and middle income countries, and many will never have access to a laptop. But they text – a lot. According to the International Telecommunications Union, the number of SMS messages tripled globally from 2007 to 2010, reaching a grand total of 6.1 trillion texts – or a blistering 200,000 a second.

Frontline SMS basically takes that already working system, and helps organizations use it to communicate with large groups of people in developing countries. For most of the beneficiaries of the software, nothing really changes.

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