Facebook’s Zuckerberg in India to get ‘next billion online’

Facebook’s Zuckerberg in India to get ‘next billion online’

Facebook’s Zuckerberg in India to get ‘next billion online’

Facebook chief executive and founder Mark
Zuckerberg said Wednesday he believes India
will be crucial to getting “the next billion online”
and helping to alleviate poverty.
Speaking to about 900 students at New
Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology,
Zuckerberg said broadening Internet
access was vital to economic
development in a country where a
billion people are still not online.
“If you really have a mission of
connecting every person in the world
you can’t do that without connecting
people in India,” Zuckerberg, dressed in
a grey T-shirt and dark jeans, told the
audience.
“We have the second biggest community
in India and we want the next billion to
come online,” he said, adding that
Internet access helps create jobs and lift
people out of poverty.
India is Facebook’s second biggest
market after the United States, with
about 130 million of its 1.5 billion
worldwide users, making it critically
important for the site which is banned
in China.
The 31-year-old billionaire gave
lighthearted answers to questions
including “Why do I get so many
requests for (online game) Candy
Crush?” and “If you could have a
supernatural power what would you
wish for?”
But he also vigorously defended
Facebook’s controversial Internet.org
project, which provides free access to the
Internet, mainly in poor rural
communities, in 24 countries including
India.
Critics of Internet.org say it violates net
neutrality — the principle that
companies providing Internet access
should not favour some sites or restrict
access to others.
“We have a moral responsibility to look
out for people who do not have the
Internet… and make sure the rules don’t
get twisted to hurt people who don’t have
a voice,” Zuckerberg said, adding that
the programme had brought a million
Indians online.
Facebook is also exploring new ways to
increase access in hard-to-reach areas,
he said, such as solar-powered planes to
“beam down connectivity” and data-light
apps that work on slow 2G networks.
Zuckerberg’s trip came after a weekend
visit to Tsinghua university in Beijing
where he delivered a 20-minute speech
in Mandarin, a language he has been
studying since 2010.
He met India’s tech-savvy Prime
Minister Narendra Modi last month
when the premier toured Facebook on a
visit to Silicon Valley, advocating the
political power of social media.