Basic Internet Services For Free
Facebook has tied up with Reliance Communications to provide basic internet services on mobilephones for free, making India the first country in Asia to get Facebook’s Internet.org service. The companies will be first offering the app in seven of India’s 22 regions, or zones and will be going nationwide in the next 90 days, said Gurdeep Singh, chief executive of Reliance’s consumer business.The service is run by Internet.org, a non-profit organisation whose backers include Ericsson. Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm and Opera Software, which has the declared aim of making basic Internet services available to the two-thirds of the world’s population which is not yet connected. The app, is aimed at low income and rural users, will offer free access via mobile phone to more than 30 pared-down web services, focused on job listings, agricultural information, healthcare and education sites in seven regional languages — as well as Facebook’s own social network and messaging services. It will be available to all of Reliance’s 106.3 million subscribers who have handsets capable of handling internet traffic.
Denisha Sahadevan