Free SMS Group Communication in whole Pakistan

Dear Friends -




Recently a friend from a university suggested that we open up our free SMS group communication service -- chopaal.pk -- to all universities/ schools/colleges in Pakistan. As some of you know, chOpaal (www.chOpaal. pk) is a free group SMS service used by tens thousands of people from across Pakistan and sends a little over 5 Million SMS/month between various interest groups.




In the absence of university/organiza tional mailing lists and the current load-shedding situation, it is often difficult to coordinate activity or disseminate information over email.




Currently ChOpaal is used by students/professors /researchers of around 250 schools/universitie s/colleges for coordination of activities, classes, exams and student societies; sharing of information on topics of common interest; or simply staying in touch with a group of friends.




Therefore, at this point we wanted to invite all our friends from different universities/ colleges/ schools and other groups to use ChOpaal for free. The service is really simple: you simply need to create a group name by sending an SMS to chopaal or by going to the chopaal website, while others can join in the group by sending an SMS with the group name. Subsequently, any message sent to the group is broadcast to the entire group -- you only pay for one SMS as per your plan (1-5 paisa) even if the message is going to several thousand people on the group. If you create the group using the chopaal website, you can make closed or moderated group or one-way groups, such that the membership is closed, communication on the group is one way or moderated. By default, the communication is one-to-many.




The service is simple to use:

Simply send a message to 033-ChOpaal- 5 (0332-4672255) with the message "join group-name" e.g. join lums. You will subscribed to the group and will be delivered a message whenever someone sends a message to the group. Likewise, you can create a group by sending an SMS to 0332-4672255 with the contents "create group-name" e.g. create lums. To send a message to a group, you can simply include the name of the group in your sms e.g. school will be closed tomorrow lums (this message will delivered to the lums group automatically) .




There is a whole set of commands you can learn from the chopaal website: http://www.chopaal. pk -- to control the traffic delivered to you, report spam etc.




As a start, if you wanted to stay up to date with swat relief activities, you can simply subscribe to the "idp" group by sending an sms to 0332-4672255 saying: Join idp. You can also see the sms exchanged on this public group at: http://www.chopaal. pk/idp.



Hope this is useful for the broader academic community in Pakistan! If you have any questions, please free to write to team@chopaal. pk.

Best,


Umar Saif (SSE LUMS)

http://www.mit.edu/~umar


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Many other wrote regarding blood donation groups on chopaal:

Take a look at: http://chopaal. pk/blood

Thanks,
-Umar