Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the Internet.org app has been launched in Malawi and is now serving 1 billion people around the world.
Zuck announced in a post, “We just launched Internet.org in Malawi, giving people on the TNM and Airtel Malawi networks access to free basic internet services.With this launch, Internet.org is now available to more than 1 billion people around the world!”
Launched in August 2013 in partnership with Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Microsoft, Opera Software, Reliance, and Qualcomm, Internet.orgis aimed at connecting the next 5 billion people to the Internet. Internet.org provides basic web services to users such as news, search, jobs, e-health information among others.
“Giving people free access is the right thing to do. We will keep connecting more people and more countries, and we won’t stop until every person in the world can connect to the internet,” Zuckerberg added.
Internet.org. is already live in Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Guatemala and Colombia. India’s launch faced a lot of critcism concerning net neutrality forcing Internet.org to be launched there as a platform for developers to build apps and services on it.
