The founding members of internet.org - Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung - will develop joint projects, share knowledge, and mobilize industry and governments to bring the world online.
The new effort that aims to give Internet access to two-thirds of the world who are not yet online has come a few months after Google released 30 helium-filled balloons for Project Loon that aims to provide internet access to 4.7 billion people in rural and remote areas. Internet.org too, wants to make access affordable, using data more efficiently and helping businesses drive access. The founders say they have been influenced by the success of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide initiative that has lowered the costs of cloud computing by making hardware designs more efficient and innovative.
According to Facebook, the partners will think of ways to use less data by improving the efficiency of the apps built and how they can help businesses drive internet access to get people online. They also want to develop technologies that make mobile connectivity more affordable and decrease the cost of delivering data to people worldwide. This means there will be collaborations to develop lower-cost, higher-quality smartphones and partnerships to more broadly deploy internet access in underserved communities.
Mobile operators will play a central role in this effort by driving initiatives that benefit the entire ecosystem. Potential projects include developing data compression tools, enhancing network capabilities to more efficiently handle data, building systems to cache data efficiently and creating frameworks for apps to reduce data usage. By reducing the cost and amount of data required for most apps and enabling new business models, Internet.org is focused on enabling the next 5 billion people to come online.
"There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it," says Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook.
“This new initiative has big potential to help accelerate access to the Internet for everyone,” said JK Shin, CEO and President of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics.
“We’re focused on delivering high quality mobile devices to ensure that the next five billion people have great mobile Internet experiences.” The Internet.org website launches today and provides an overview of the mission and goals, as well as a full list of the partners. In the coming weeks, it will feature interviews with technology leaders and experts, along with the latest news on Internet.org activities.
Author's take: Phone makers and Internet giants have already been working on several projects to help more people connect to the Internet. This is not an innovation but appears to be a good initiative because the more the hands the better. Other initiatives to give Internet access to developing countries and rural areas include:
Google Free Zone
Zero Facebook
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