NEW DELHI- The world cannot be connected without India, social media platform Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Oct 28. “It is very important to connect people in India (one of the largest democracies) as it is central to our plans of connecting the next billion people and then the whole world,” Zuckerberg said at the townhall meeting held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. “India is one of those countries...
which you cannot overlook if you want to connect the world,” he added. The townhall at IIT Delhi follows the Menlo Park chapter at Facebook headquarters which was held during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second US visit. Zuckerberg also reiterated his commitment to India by clarifying his plans of opening schools here.
“We have opened schools in Africa with internet capable infrastructure to give a boost to education quality and we are evaluating plans to open such schools in India in the future,” the chief executive said.
Asked about net neutrality and Internet.org, Zuckerberg said the platform via its free basics program aims to solve three problems of connecting to the internet — availability, affordability and awareness. “We are trying to aid availability by streaming the internet via satellites. In terms of affordability, free basics is free to use and also low on data consumption. Users are not forced to pay for the service,” Zuckerberg said reiterating the need of an open internet platform like its proprietary initiative Internet.org in India while reminding that Facebook always supported net neutrality and adhered to regulations. “We have always adhered to net neutrality regulations but there are several countries who still do not have norms in place. We will adapt to them as soon as they are in place as we are in the favour of being 100% net neutral,” Zuckerberg said. Further explaining, he said “Free basics program under the Internet.org initiative aims to connect the next billion people. It does not intend to harm anyone — neither the consumers nor the operators,” he said.
“Any developer who can stream low-data consuming content can be a part of the platform,” the chief executive told a gathering of 1,100 people expressing his discontent in some way over the ongoing debate about net neutrality.
“We have opened schools in Africa with internet capable infrastructure to give a boost to education quality and we are evaluating plans to open such schools in India in the future,” the chief executive said.
Asked about net neutrality and Internet.org, Zuckerberg said the platform via its free basics program aims to solve three problems of connecting to the internet — availability, affordability and awareness. “We are trying to aid availability by streaming the internet via satellites. In terms of affordability, free basics is free to use and also low on data consumption. Users are not forced to pay for the service,” Zuckerberg said reiterating the need of an open internet platform like its proprietary initiative Internet.org in India while reminding that Facebook always supported net neutrality and adhered to regulations. “We have always adhered to net neutrality regulations but there are several countries who still do not have norms in place. We will adapt to them as soon as they are in place as we are in the favour of being 100% net neutral,” Zuckerberg said. Further explaining, he said “Free basics program under the Internet.org initiative aims to connect the next billion people. It does not intend to harm anyone — neither the consumers nor the operators,” he said.
“Any developer who can stream low-data consuming content can be a part of the platform,” the chief executive told a gathering of 1,100 people expressing his discontent in some way over the ongoing debate about net neutrality.
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