The Plan: Make the Internet 100X More Affordable

Making the Internet AffordableImagine if one day everyone had access to the Internet? The mission of Internet.org is to make basic internet services affordable so at least everyone with a phone can get online. Currently, two-thirds of the world is still in the dark.

Internet.org is led by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In a promo video for the initiative, Zuckerberg explains how we can bring the internet to all:

The way the world works is changing. We used to live in an economy that was primarily resource-based, which meant that if I own something, you couldn’t also own the same thing. But the future of the world economy is a knowledge economy. Me knowing something doesn’t prevent you from also knowing it because we can share knowledge and information. Imagine a world where everyone had access to education and healthcare information…The internet is really the backbone of the knowledge economy. If everyone had access to those basic tools, we’d all be able to benefit from all of the innovation and creativity and ideas that everyone had.”

knowledge economy
 

Internet.org: The Plan

The plan is to make internet affordable so that anyone with a phone can join the knowledge economy. In order to do this, we need to find a way to make the cost of internet data 99% cheaper!
lower cost and data

1. Reduce the Cost

To reduce our costs, Zuckerberg says we need to build out communications infrastructure to make signals travel farther. This would mean we could build fewer cellphone towers. We need to clean up the airwaves and use the available spectrum more efficiently, Zuckerberg says. Finally, we also need to make cheaper and longer-lasting devices.

2. Use Less Data

How can we make the internet use less data? First, we can make our apps intelligently store or cache data instead of burning up precious bandwidth by constantly reloading the same information. Second, Zuckerberg believes we can compress the data received from the Web so that we only have to transfer 40% of the data we use now.

When Zuckerberg started working on Facebook, he was able to do so because he had access to a few basic tools that he needed online. He aims to make it so that others around the world have those resources at hand too.

ready for the net
 
Are you ready for a more connected and educated world? Find out more about Internet.org here.

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

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