Facebook aims for free internet access worldwide
Founder and major carriers plan to make Philippines experiment global.
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On day one of MWC, Zuckerberg presented his pitch for Internet.org – a global partnership that brings the Internet to developing countries. As Zuckerberg and his team tried to figure out what problem in the world they wanted to fix next, they realized their mission wasn’t to connect one-seventh of the world, it was to connect the whole world, he said. That’s when they got the vision to create a dial tone for the Internet that includes a basic service similar to dialing 911 in the U.S.
“One thing that I think it’s easy to take for granted,” Zuckerberg said, “is that most people in the world don’t have access to the Internet. It’s about 2.7 billion people now and it’s actually growing a lot slower than you’d imagine.”
Zuckerberg wants to partner with mobile carriers to provide Internet service through WhatsApp because it is the most engaging app that exists on a mobile phone, he said. According to Zuckerberg, “70 percent of its users use it everyday and there are very few services that can reach that level.”
The company is currently working on creating an onramp to the Internet, something accessible by phone without having a phone plan.
Zuckerberg started in the Philippines working with Globe – the second largest telco in the Philippines. The country recently surveyed as the poorest and slowest mobile network. However, the number of people there using Internet data has nearly doubled in the past year after they received free basic service. These free services included Facebook and Messenger.
Source: Metro.us
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