Zuck Unveils Facebook's Grand Plan To Provide Free Internet For Everyone | TechTree.com

Zuck Unveils Facebook's Grand Plan To Provide Free Internet For Everyone

FB founder claims connectivity is human right, founds Internet.org with technology leaders.

 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced the launch of internet.org, which is a global partnership with the goal of providing free internet access to everyone, worldwide. Internet.org is a Facebook initiative supported by Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung, to jointly develop projects, share knowledge, and mobilise industry and governments promoting connectivity for everyone.

Zuckerberg posted on his FB page, "For nine years, we've been on a mission to connect the world. We now connect more than 1 billion people, but to connect the next 5 billion we must solve a much bigger problem: the vast majority of people don't have access to the internet. I'm focused on this because I think it's one of the greatest challenges of our generation. I've attached a rough plan I've written outlining the work Facebook is doing to solve this and how our industry can work together to connect the next 5 billion people".

You can read more about it here and the whitepaper PDF on this site. Zuckerberg has floated this idea, and states that it will evolve as more people provide their own inputs and feedbacks. The partnership with technology leaders should help lower cost of internet connected devices. Incidentally, Facebook is not the first company that has undertaken this initiative. Earlier this year, Microsoft had also made a similar effort with 23 partners to expand access to wireless technologies. Google's "Project Loon" is planned to deliver global internet access to emerging economies by floating balloons to connect remote areas wirelessly.

While the aim is a noble one, we think that it is too early to call internet connectivity a human right, when more pressing issues remain to be addressed such as poverty and hunger. Additional hurdles such as economics and corruption at the local level are bound to rear their ugly heads as well. It is also not clear how the social networking giant plans to connect the vast majority of people who still do not even have basic internet-connected gadgets. You can take a look at the video "Every one of us. #ConnectTheWorld" put up by Internet.org.

Do you think that Facebook's Internet.org initiative is viable? Will it be able to make internet freely accessible to everyone in our country? Let us know in the comments below.


TAGS: Internet, Facebook

 
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