Satya Swaroop
Member • Aug 20, 2013
Internet.org Initiative By Facebook CEO Plans To Make Internet Access Available For All
While 2.7 billion of us have all the information we need on our fingertips, we tend to forget about the remaining 5 billion who have yet to gain access to this resource. Keeping in mind the dismal nine percent growth in internet adoption rate Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sought the cooperation of companies like Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung for his Internet.org initiative that plans to work on technologies that shall make internet accessible the remaining two-thirds of the global population. The founding partners in this project will work sharing knowledge and try to mobilise both the industries and governments to make a more connected world. According to the #-Link-Snipped-# ‘Is Connectivity A Human Right?’ released by Zuckerberg he mentions the challenges being faced by the initiative and outlines a rough plan on how to tackle them.
He starts with the goal of making internet access more affordable by improving the efficiency and reducing costs incurred by mobile service providers by implementing technologies like network extension and edge caching. He proposes an Open Compute Project where companies and individuals can work together in implementing the above mentioned technologies. He elaborates about Edge Caching and White space spectrum. He also requests to government to look closely at spectrum allocation policies and make more spectrum available to the public. He writes:
"There are also more speculative approaches we’re investigating, including enabling people to download some News Feed stories and photos from their friends’ nearby phones over Wiï¬ Direct and other local network technologies. This will not eliminate the need for mobile data, but it can further reduce the associated costs here, as well as enable people to load content when they have spotty connections.
Overall, it seems reasonable to expect that over the next few years we can deliver many of the same basic services using at least 10x less data than we’re using today. If we can do this, then these services will become at least 10x cheaper for people buying pre-paid data plans in developing countries. Again, doing this by itself will go a long way towards making internet access affordable and available to all."
For mobile phone companies and app developers he recommends them to use data compression and caching techniques so that the customers do not have to pay more for mobile data. Lastly he wants business to work on bringing Zero-rating data for all of their services and improved credit and identity infrastructure. To know more about this initiative we recommend you check out the attached PDF.
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
"There are also more speculative approaches we’re investigating, including enabling people to download some News Feed stories and photos from their friends’ nearby phones over Wiï¬ Direct and other local network technologies. This will not eliminate the need for mobile data, but it can further reduce the associated costs here, as well as enable people to load content when they have spotty connections.
Overall, it seems reasonable to expect that over the next few years we can deliver many of the same basic services using at least 10x less data than we’re using today. If we can do this, then these services will become at least 10x cheaper for people buying pre-paid data plans in developing countries. Again, doing this by itself will go a long way towards making internet access affordable and available to all."
For mobile phone companies and app developers he recommends them to use data compression and caching techniques so that the customers do not have to pay more for mobile data. Lastly he wants business to work on bringing Zero-rating data for all of their services and improved credit and identity infrastructure. To know more about this initiative we recommend you check out the attached PDF.
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
