Mark Zuckerberg And Other Tech Execs Are Looking To Give 5 Billion People Internet Access

Elite Daily — by Sean Levinson V Aug 21, 2013

Mark Zuckerberg And Other Tech Execs Are Looking To Give 5 Billion People Internet AccessMark Zuckerberg is leading a new project to provide Internet access to underdeveloped countries by significantly lowering the cost of connecting to the web.

Internet.org is a collaborative effort involving some of the biggest tech companies on earth, including Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson and chip designer Qualcomm.

The primary goal is to make the Internet affordable for roughly five billion impoverished people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Facebook is currently trying to alter the programming of its mobile app so that it requires less bandwidth and is therefore cheaper to run.

The mobile companies are trying to make handsets that have longer battery lives and draw less Internet bandwidth.

article-2398627-1B63B5C9000005DC-891_634x328-1According to Daily Mail, Zuckerberg hopes to reduce the cost of Internet access by 99% in ten years.

“The goal of Internet.org is to make Internet access available to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected and to bring the same opportunities to everyone that the connected third of the world has today,” Zuckerberg said.

The project’s main focus is smartphone connectivity, as billions of people in under-developed nations already use cell phones to communicate. Mobile phones are also cheaper than PCs and are more practical Internet sources in areas with unreliable electricity.

Internet.org has been live since this morning. The project’s website features an excerpt from a 1963 speech by John F. Kennedy set to images of impoverished people and regions.

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