Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stunned packed auditoria at the Mobile World Congress 2014 with his vision of pervasive Internet in an evening keynote. Already snubbed by Vodafone, he invited 3 to 5 network operators to join Internet.Org, envisioned as an industry coalition, which will create an on-ramp for the Internet through relevant information and services.

 

On this trajectory, Internet.org today announced a partnership with makers of Lifebuoy soap, Unilever, to examine the opportunities to increase Internet adoption in rural communities in India.  Apart from known barriers to connectivity, such as infrastructure and cost, the partnership will carefully evaluate other educational and cultural factors that limit Internet use.

 

Zuckerberg reminded the Congress that only 2.7 billion people on the planet have internet access, which leaves 2/3rds of the world unconnected. People want Internet not for its sake, but for life essentials, such as health emergencies, reporting crime and fire alerts, which should be provided free. This could then be upscaled to provide weather and food prices.

 

He cited a recent affiliation with Globe in the Philippines where internet and data consumption doubled when Facebook offered weather, food prices and Wikipedia. Similarly, Paraguay’s Tigo saw a 50% growth in new connections when free data packages were provided. “Facebook advertisement markets in emerging countries don’t add up to anything significant,” said Zuckerburg, positioning his venture as an altruistic one, which would eventually yield profits for both Facebook and network providers.

 

Zuckerberg laid out his three-point plan on how Internet can be provided pervasively and sustainably:

 

• Decreasing the cost of internet overall, by open-sourcing servers and switches, making cheaper smartphones and reforming the spectrum

• Using data more efficiently: data-hungry apps on Facebook effected a 10 times improvement by optimizing use from an average 14 Mbps a day to 2 Mbps a day, and is now working to reduce that to 1 Mbps a day.

• Increasing ‘upsells’ to basic subscribers in partnership with carriers

 

Much needs to be done to take the friction out of the process, he said, and towards these ends, Facebook has been collaborating with Ericsson Labs to create an environment for apps developers at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Zuckerberg revealed. The Internet.org Innovation Lab will allow developers to test their apps in real-world environments and optimize those apps for customers in different regions.

 

Operators were quick to pooh-pooh Zuckerberg’s proposition, branding it as a master plan for world domination. By partnering with mobile operators, Facebook stands to capture the early adopters of Internet and thus monopolise the social media market, stakeholders felt.

 

“While he will be the beneficiary of the data mining and analytics generated by these ventures, he has made no offer to share the costs of the infrastructure, for example, the extraordinary investment of providing a basic 2 Mbps internet connectivity to each person on the planet,” pointed out one European operator.

 

Earlier in the day, the growing imbalance between network operators and over-the-top application providers such as Facebook dominated plenary discussions. Ahmad Abdul karim Julfar of Etisalat, invited all stakeholders to invest in infrastructure. “Most of the revenues come from mobile companies, and so also the investment,” he said, but the margins for them are spiraling to zero or becoming squeezed. “Not everything is free,” he reiterated, hinting that the capitalization of players like Facebook increasingly engaging Wall Street will force a breakthrough in the next two years in collaboration between the mobile industry and internet companies and the willingness of the latter to pay their way to success.