Facebook joins tech giants to launch 'internet.org'
Social networking g iant Face
with six book has joined forces other technology
giants including the likes of Nokia
and Samsung to laun ch
"i nternet.org" with an aim to
make Internet access af fordable
f or p eople across the globe.
the Focussed on ena bling next five billion people without
the access to come o nline, founding members of
the project in clude F acebook,
Ericsson, MediaTek, Noki
a, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung. The inititiave will
see the partners colla borate on devel
qualioping lower-cost, higher- ty smartphones and
deploying Internet access in
underserved communities. "E
verything Facebook has done
has b een about giving all
people a round the world the power
to connect. There are huge
barriers in developing countries
to conn ecting and joining the knowledge
f ounder economy," Facebook and CEO Mar k Z uckerberg said in a sta tement,
reports PTI. Internet.org brings
together a global partnership
t hat will work to o vercome these chal
interlenges, including making net access a vailable
to those who cannot currently afford it,
is now he added. "Our industry at a n exciting inf lection point
is where Internet connectivity
and becoming more affordable efficient f or consume
rs w hile still offering them
great experiences. Universal
in ternet access will be the next g reat in
No kia dustrial revolution," President and CE
O Ste phen Elop said. Internet.org is inf
luenced by the "Op en Compute
Pr oject", an industry-wide
initiative that has lowered the co sts of cloud
har dcomputing b y making growing by less than
nine per cent annually. Mobile has helped
to tran sform many people's
lives in the emerging regions
where often a computing device
will be the first an d onl y mo
bile experience they'll e ver
ha ve, Qua lcomm Chairman of the boar d
said. and CEO Paul Jacobs "The goal of Internet.
org is to make Internet
access available to the tw o-thirds of the wo rld
and who are not yet connected, to b ring th e same oppo
rtunities to e veryone tha
t the connected thir d of t he
wo rld h as today," Zuckerberg
said. The partners will
also invest in tools to "drama
tically" r educe the amount
of data required to use most
apps and internet e xperiences.
Po tential projects i nclude
de veloping data compression
tools , enhancing netw ork
ca pabilities to more efficiently
handle data, building systems
to cache data efficiently and
creating frameworks for apps
to r educe data usage, the statement said. ware d esigns more
e fficient and innovative. Today, about 2.7
billion people or over one-third
of the world's population have
acc ess to the internet and its
ad option is