July 31, 2014 9:21 am
Facebook app to offer free internet in Zambia By Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco
©Bloomberg Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook has created an app to offer free basic internet services to users in emerging
markets as part of its push to “connect everyone” and expand its user base beyond the
1.3bn people who already use the social network.
It is also teaming up with a mobile carrier in Zambia to offer free access to job searches,
weather forecasts and Wikipedia on its new Internet.org app.
The app, named after a project to extend the internet to the two-thirds of the world who
are not online, allows people to access these services, as well as Facebook and the
company’s Messenger app, without paying data fees.
Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook founder, said increasing internet participation over time would “probably be
good for us [Facebook] several times over”.
The new app will be available first to subscribers to Airtel, one of the largest carriers in
Zambia. It works on both smartphones and the more basic feature phones that are
common in developing countries.
Guy Rosen, product management director at Internet.org and founder of Onavo, a start-
up acquired by Facebook last year, said the app would help overcome the two main
barriers to internet adoption: people not knowing why they would want to use the web
and not being able to afford it.
“Awareness is a problem, people don’t really know what the internet is. It is a vague and
abstract concept so they don’t know what it can do for the lives and livelihood,” he said.
Mr Rosen added it was designed to be easy to use and not eat up huge amounts of data.
“It is simplicity, it is not a big sexy app,” he said.
While Internet.org is probably most famous for developing drones to beam down
connectivity to the most far flung corners of the world, this app will help them target the
85 per cent of the world’s population that lives in areas with only cellular coverage.
Tech blog
Mr Zuckerberg started Internet.org, an industry coalition that is working to deliver the
internet to everyone and to offer basic internet services for free.
“We think that we can do this in a way that gets people access to some basic services
while increasing the overall number of subscribers and profits for the overall industries
[so] people can invest more in building out this infrastructure even more,” Mr
Zuckerberg said.
Facebook has agreed many deals with telecoms companies around the world to ‘zero
rate’ the Facebook app, allowing people to access it without paying for data.
Mr Rosen said these had been successful for the carriers because those who can afford
it, often spend more on data when they understand what the internet can offer.
“Our vision for free basic services is to make them an on-ramp to the internet,” he said.
