After the successful launch of its service in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana and Colombia, Facebook has partnered with Reliance Communications to roll out its Internet.org in India with around 40 web services to offer.
The service initially will be available in six states viz. Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, and Telangana. Facebook seems to be working fine on its agenda of promoting usage of Internet in the world. India becomes the first country in Asia to have Internet.org.
This service will help the mobile users to get access to news, health, travel, sports, and local government and job information in English and six local languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati and Marathi.
Speaking at the launch Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook said, “Over the last year we’ve rolled out Internet.org free basic services to countries with more than 150 Mn people total across Africa and Latin America. More than 6 Mn people are already connected to the internet who previously weren’t, and we’ve started hearing incredible stories about how the internet is changing lives and communities. But to continue connecting the world, we have to connect India. More than a billion people in India don’t have access to the internet. That means they can’t enjoy the same opportunities many of us take for granted, and the entire world is robbed of their ideas and creativity.”
The services will be offered to the users including Aaj Tak news, AccuWeather, AP Speaks, Babajob, BabyCenter & MAMA, BBC News, Bing Search, Cleartrip, Dictionary.com, ESPN CricInfo, Girl Effect, HungamaPlay, Maalai Malar Tamil news, OLX, Reuters Market Lite, TimesJobs, Wikipedia and wikiHow, besides Facebook messenger. The service will target low income and rural areas and will be available through Android operating system.
