According to the information provided by the famous Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the mobile web is about to face the exciting future. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Zuckerberg was excited to announce that Facebook is getting ready to set up partnership with 3-5 significant wireless carriers to provide essential and absolutely free phone access to every individual all over the globe – with the direct emphasis on the developing nations.
At the present moment, only about one billion people around the world have mobile phones. At the same time, up to 80% of the rest of earth’s population lives within the places that have either 2G or 3G mobile web access, the Facebook CEO informs.
The problem lies in the fact that those individuals, who haven’t accessed the internet at all, haven’t the slightest idea of how useful it may actually be! Besides, they can’t afford the thousands of American dollars that it costs in the country (and the Europe as well!) to maintain a telephone together with the most suitable data plan. However, they have got two or three bucks needed to pay for the Facebook and messages basic access.
With an assortment of wireless carriers, Facebook is planning to invest in the basic phone access for every human being. The plans are an essential part of Mark’s clear vision for Internet.org, a straight initiative to provide a direct internet access to all people on the earth. The main aim is to provide every person with the basic data services, such as Facebook, weather information access, as well as search – everything free of charge!
In the countries, such as Paraguay or Philippines, Facebook has already successfully assured a partnership with the mobile carriers to make Facebook completely free for every person with the telephone in a pocket. The next step of the grandiose campaign is to expand the Facebook open access to the free basic web services access. The whole idea is about letting everyone know how the internet can quickly help change one’s life!
As for the first free connectivity that will be provided in a little while will be the text data that is quite cheap to deliver. And when users will finally get an idea of the video and streaming usefulness, the carriers will be there to provide quick one-click plans.
To make the long story short, the long-term aim of the campaign is to connect people from all over the globe. And even through the brilliant minds that stand behind the initiative will be losing money for a while at the start, the reason why Zuckerberg started Facebook was exactly the same.
References:
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- Noam, E. (2001). The next frontier for openness: Wireless communications. Draft paper presented at 2001. Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Alexandria, VA, October.
- Mark Zuckerberg and David Duncan. Mark Zuckerberg: Online PersonasApr 24, 2015.
- Cyrus Peikari and Seth Fogie. Maximum Wireless Security, by. SAMS. (December 18, 2002).
- Carros, D. (2001). Mobile carriers: No single standard in sight. Tech Update ZDNet, November 28.
- KATZ M.L. & C. SHAPIRO (1985): Network externalities, competition and compatibility, in American Economic Review, 75: 424–440.
- David Alven, Resmi Arjunanpillai, Reza Farhang, Sachin Kansal, Nauman Khan, and Ulrika Leufven, “Hotspots – Connect the dots for a wireless future: Final Report for Ericsson Business Innovation and Telia Research”.