The latest project to bring web access to the whole population has been initiated by Facebook, which has been joined by Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung. Called internet.org, the group demonstrates the usual mixture of altruism and vendors’ desire to establish an early foothold for their brands in future markets.
According to internet.org, only just over one-third of the globe’s population (2.7bn people) have web access, and mobile products and services are the way to address the gap. The primary aim of the collaboration is to make that mobile connectivity more affordable with lower cost data services.
Potential projects include new data compression technologies to use spectrum more efficiently and support cheaper data delivery; new mobile application frameworks which would consume far less data; and cheaper, more efficient smartphones.
The six founding members said they would each leverage existing partnerships to support the group’s objectives and that operator alliances would be particularly vital, though no carrier backers were announced.
“The unfair economic reality is that those already on Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined, so it may not actually be profitable for us to serve the next fewbn people for a very long time, if ever,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a white paper to accompany internet.org’s launch. “But we believe everyone deserves to be connected.”
Facebook has recently been targeting emerging markets aggressively with its Java-based Facebook for Every Phone app, combined with partnerships with key carriers in these countries. This app has now passed the 100m active user milestone, accounting for one in eight users of mobile Facebook worldwide.