In one of the most admirable
but least altruistic moves ever,
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
is heading up Internet.org, a
new global partnership that
aims to bring down the cost of mobile internet access, and to
connect the roughly four billion
inhabitants of Earth who still
don’t have access to the
internet. The primary goal, of
course, is to ensure a steady stream of new customers — and
thus an increases in stock
market valuation — for the
members of the Internet.org
alliance, which includes
Qualcomm, Samsung, and Nokia, among others. We shouldn’t
ignore the huge range of
benefits that internet access
can bestow on under-connected
communities, though: From
access to news and educational materials, to communicating with
distant friends and family,
internet access can be life-
changing.Here in the developed world,
internet-oriented companies
such as Facebook are facing an
interesting problem: Market
saturation. Whether it’s via
wireline services (Cable, DSL) or wireless (smartphones, tablets),
almost the entirety of the US,
Europe, and the rest of the
developed world is connected
to the internet — and most of
them use Facebook on a scarily regular basis. As of June 2013,
Facebook had 1.15 billion
monthly users, with 699 million
of those using the service on a
daily basis. Those are some
truly awesome figures, and you’d think that Facebook and
its share holders would be
happy, but the sad truth is
that Facebook has grown too
big too quickly. With 1.15 billion
users, and only 2.4 billion people connected to the internet —
many of which use social
networks that are popular in
their own country, such as
Vkontakte in Russia and Renren
in China — Facebook is quickly approaching saturation point. When Facebook saturates the
market, its user growth will
slow to a crawl, and its
revenue growth will eventually
follow suit. For Facebook itself,
this isn’t such a huge problem — but for the stock market,
which only really cares about
growth and growth potential,
this is a Bad Thing. And
Facebook is just one example:
There are a lot of internet- oriented companies, such as Amazon or Google, that are growth-capped by the number
of internet users.The answer, as far as Mark
Zuckerberg is concerned, is to
connect more people to the
internet. To do this, Facebook
seems to have corralled half a
dozen of the world’s tech and telecoms giants, including
Qualcomm, Samsung, Nokia,
Ericsson, MediaTek, and Opera,
into a coalition and called it Internet.org. The end goal is to get most of the world
connected to the internet, and
judging by the companies
involved, the coalition’s
effortswill be almost entirely
wireless- and mobile-oriented. This makes a lot of sense, as
there are almost seven billion
devices connected to cellular
networks worldwide (almost one
cellular device per person), but
still relatively few that are connected to the internet. To spur internet usage and
connectivity in under-connected
regions, the group’s first goal
is to cut the cost of mobile
internet access to just 1% of
its current cost within five to 10 years. This, combined with
efforts to reduce the price of
dumbphones and smartphones,
plus working with carriers to
offer free access to services
such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, should work wonders.
(See: The dumbphone strikes back.) The New York Times cites Philippines carrier Globe Telecom
as a good example of this
approach, which has gone from
0% of its 37 million users
subscribing to a mobile data
plan, to 20% in just two years by offering free access to
certain online services. There
are lots of small changes, such
as reducing power consumption
(and thus increasing battery
life), reducing the amount of internet traffic required by
certain apps, and reducing the
cost of infrastructure, that
would make internet access in
the developing world a much
more feasible proposition.Moving forward, there are
scant few who would denounce
such noble efforts to bring
internet access to the under-
connected — but at the same
time, it’s important to keep everything in perspective. As Bill
Gates succinctly put it, ”When a
kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s
no Web site that relieves that.”
Internet.org also doesn’t
appear to be interested in the long-haul backbone links
between the developed and
developing worlds, instead
focusing on local infrastructure
— not a deal-breaking flaw, but
definitely not ideal. One of the key reasons that the
developing world is taking so
long to come online is due to its
cripplingly slow links to the
Internet Prime; after all, what
good is DSL or a mobile data subscription if your country
doesn’t have enough
bandwidth to access the bulk of
the internet’s dizzying myriad
of valuable services?

to be continue.....................