Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in Barcelona to convince telcos he's their friend, not their enemy. Source: WSJ.
Facebook is pushing ahead with its bid to connect the whole world to the internet, with Mark Zuckerberg and right hand man Chris Daniels taking the stage in Barcelona to explain how they’re connecting the “next billion people” to the web.
While 90 per cent of the world’s population live in an area serviced with wireless coverage, a large number are still yet to join the internet. Internet.org, the brainchild of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and run in conjunction with big tech partners like Samsung and Qualcomm, aims to fix this by offering users a ‘free taste’ of the Internet in the hope they’ll convert to becoming paying telco subscribers (and therefore Facebook users).
Speaking with journalists at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Facebook’s VP of Internet.org Chris Daniels said the organisation’s big challenge was to convince people who had been offline their whole lives that the internet was worth using.
"These are people who have never used the internet before and they have no concept really of how it will improve their lives," he said.
“But what we've seen with six countries we've launched is that it works,” Mr Daniels said. “We’re continuing to roll this program out more broadly, and any operator can turn it on in any market. We're offering Facebook Messenger alongside free educational and health apps for example; we're giving people a free taste of the Internet and they're converting to paying customers."
Internet.org offers people in countries like Zambia and India access to free basic services, like Facebook, health information, and educational resources, where often they've never had Internet access previously.
Facebook has faced barbs that it would take vital SMS revenue away from telcos however, effectively canniblising them as Facebook Messenger dominates users’ messaging habits, a charge Mr Daniels denied.
"We’re helping making sure operators are profitable,” he said.
"In Tanzania for example there’s a telco called Tigo, and we’ve helped increase their smartphone sales ten times. Paying data users have also gone up significantly."
He cited numbers that showed telcos who turned on Internet.org services experienced a 40 per cent increase in data usage, which translated into hefty revenues.
Technology Spectator asked Mr Daniels why Internet.org was showing prime-time TV ads in Australia and Canada, when the program was aimed specifically at areas not yet well connected to the Internet like the Phillipines and India.
"Internet.org is a big part of what Facebook is,” Mr Daniels said.
"And so when we think about Facebook and we think about Facebook's mission to make the world more open and connected, Internet.org is core to that. So Facebook talking about its mission is something we should expect Facebook to do, whether that be in Australia or anywhere else."
Mr Daniels said working with Mark Zuckerberg was “fantastic,” heaping praise on his 30-year-old boss and describing him as a visionary.
"Personally I've really enjoyed working with Mark, he's great to work with,” Mr Daniels told Technology Spectator.
"What sets Mark apart is that he combines a unique vision and the vision that he had for Facebook in making the world more open and connected was the real result of his execution, and that combination has created what Facebook is and what the Facebook community is, and I think that's unique and he's great to work with. He's fantastic."
Some industry executives have criticised Facebook and its apps like WhatsApp for not investing in the critical infrastructure required to give access to the billions of people that use them, with one calling for Facebook to be regulated to the same degree as telco.
‘‘We want a level playing field,’’ Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, said in Barcelona. ‘‘Facebook now has become one of the biggest internet messaging companies in the world.’’
Mr Zuckerberg played down the concerns however, claiming the revenue generated by telcos thanks to Facebook's data requirements was a big boon for them.
‘‘The business of operators used to be voice and messaging, but that has shifted towards data,’’ Mr. Zuckerberg said. ‘‘Apps like Facebook drive data usage, and that’s the future of the business.’
"It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the real companies that are driving this are the operators and all the investments they’re putting together.”
Christian De Faria, chief executive of Airtel Africa and one of Facebook’s partners in the Internet.org initiative told the stage he was initially skeptical about joining the Internet.org initiative.
‘‘One year ago, if you had asked me about Facebook, I would have said it was like beauty and the beast,’’ Mr. De Faria told the conference, adding that his carrier had seen an increase in paid data traffic since joining Internet.org. ‘‘But I can say that the beast has become more human.’’
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