Oct 10 2014 : The Times of India (Kochi) `Connectivity should be fundamental right TIMES NEWS NETWORK Given the Delhi weather, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg understandably skipped wearing his trademark hoodie. Even so, he stayed determinedly casual, delivering a passionate keynote address for the first internet.org summit in grey tee and blue jeans. After his speech, Zuckerberg briefly interacted with a select group of journalists and answered wide-ranging questions. Excerpts: Could you tell us something about the internet.org initiative? There are over 2.7 billion internet users in the world.But thats barely one-third of the human population. There are still 4.5 billion people who arent connected to the Internet. This is because of lack of infrastructure, social barriers and the cost of Internet access. Sure, data charges are coming down but when 2.5 billion people still survive on less than $2 a day , itll be a long time before everybody will be able to afford Internet access. As far as lack of infrastructure is concerned, one of the solutions were working on is solar-energy fuelled planes that will beam signals to remote ar eas Through internet.org, were trying to lower access barriers. Facebook alone isnt in a position to bring connectivity to the rest of the world. Well have to work closely with lots of forward-leaning companies and people to make that happen. We want to partner with telecom operators, governments and NGOs, to provide some important apps or services free tant apps or services free -stuff like health, education, jobs, messaging. Just like you can call 911 toll-free in the US and 100 in India, you should be able to get some basic services free on the net. Once people who have never had access to the net get some idea of what it can do for them, they might be more willing to spend some money on data. But in the long term, this needs to be profitable for operators, who spend on setting up Internet infrastructure. Do you plan to bring this initiative to India? I have no specific announce ments right now for India, but itll obviously be a big part of our plans for many years to come. Weve deliberately start ed small in countries like Indo nesia, Paraguay, Philippines, Tanzania and Zambia, in markets that arent too complex, because we want to build success cases about how people got online and operators made money . Well come to bigger countries like India later. India is im portant to us. We want to make sure we get it right when we do come here. This could take a few years to get done but were in for the long haul. Why is India important for Facebook? Theres no getting away from the numbers. You can transform millions of lives at one go, thats an exciting opportunity . But its not just the quan tity but quality of people. India is forward-looking when it comes to em bracing education, science and re search and technology. Some of the best engineers in the world come out of here. And you think about all the potential that may be going waste be cause people arent connected. I could start Facebook out of a dorm in Harvard because connectivity wasnt an issue. When a billion people are of fline, the world is being robbed of their creativity and ideas. When you hook them up to the net, you dont just change lives, you help improve the world too. India is an amazing country with unlimited potential and big ambitions. You are used to transforming lives t h ro u g h revo l u t i o n s.Through the Green Revolution, you rescued millions from hunger. The telecom revolution has been a huge boon for India. The Mars mission was a truly impressive scientific feat. India is the only country to get to Mars only country to get to Mars on the first shot. Having said that, Indias diversity makes it an enormous challenge. We al ready offer Facebook in 13 Indian lan guages, but there are 22 official languag es and hundreds of dialects in India. Weve already connected over 100 million here through Facebook. In all, India has 243 million Internet users. But theres still a billion people who need to be con nected. Local language-based content will be a big focus area for us here. We already have three offices in India and over 100 million users and we expect to grow rapidly here. Do you have a wishlist of things to ask from PM Modi when you meet him? He has launched a Digital India ini tiative and were excited to see how we can plug in and help with that. There are over 600,000 villages in India that dont have access to Internet infrastructure. I know Mr Modi is committed to bringing them online. Hon estly, I dont think Ill ask him for too many things. Most of my time with him will be spent listening and learning about what we can do to help. Facebook recently completed the acquisition of WhatsApp. Do you plan to make money out of it? There are many successful business models out there already for making money out of messaging services. As far as WhatsApp is concerned, for the next few years at least, our focus will be to help connect more and more people. There are no near-term plans to monetize WhatsApp. Facebook has been criticized for not doing enough to protect user privacy, sometimes even intruding on it... Much more than policy, were focused on the product. We provide tools that give users control over who can see what. You can post something just for a small group, and something for the world to see, and you can have private conversations on Facebook. One metric that we care about is that when people share something, does it reach people they wanted it to, and only those people? We get a lot of feedback from users around the world. Different users may have different concerns. People in the US may want to talk about something very different from Indians. But we try our best to incorporate all the feedback we get, no matter where it comes from, and when we roll out an improvement in the product, we ensure it goes out to all 1.3 billion users at the same time. Do you think someone else as disruptive as Google or Facebook could come along? And if you were to launch another start-up now, what would it do? There are so many different ways in which people want to communicate -text, photos, videos -and so many diverse audiences: from your spouse to small groups of friends to a large bunch of people. Each of these offers an opportunity . I think public sharing, news and messaging will get much bigger. Telecom operators have been charging for SMS for years. Probably some 20 billion SMSs sent every day but if operators could find a way to reduce what they charge for sending messages, Im guessing that figure could go up to 100 billion a day. So much has changed since I launched Facebook. Most people use phones a lot more than they use computers. I certainly do. Theres a lot of important paperwork, including documents related to Facebooks stock market listing, that I got done on the phone. If I had to do a start-up now, Id look for openings -media and particular ways in which people want to share stuff that still havent been tapped yet -and figure out how best to serve them. Is Internet access really so important in a country where many still dont have access to food and water and toilets? Id be the last person to say you need one thing over the other. If you have toilets without water, youll be in pretty bad shape, and the other way around. A modern society needs to have all these things. Im not an advocate of technology for its own sake. It needs to improve lives too. Thats what counts as progress. In Zambia, one of the places where weve launched some trials, pregnant women use the free Net services provided to learn about how to take better care of themselves and the children theyre carrying. A lot of information is being disseminated on HIV , which is a big problem in Zambia. Also, the reason were focused on Internet access is because it makes sense to do stuff that you know something about. Weve found that in many developing countries, people typically want to use a phone to make calls and send texts.The third most important thing for them after that is Facebook. So, were in a unique spot when it comes to pushing for Internet access. But people shouldnt have to choose between necessities. I believe that connectivity should be a fundamental right for people. Wont this initiative perpetuate your existing monopoly? When we talk to governments and telecom operators on providing some free net services, we never insist that Facebook must be part of the package, though were happy to provide it if they like. We just want them to give people who have never used the Internet, and have no idea what it can do for them, a chance to sample some of its benefits. Tomorrow, if China were to sign up for this, Facebook would probably still be blacked out there.Hopefully people would get some basic services free. A restricted net is better than no access at all. Many activists have criticized Indian laws, particularly Sec 66(A) of the IT Act, as being unduly harsh and restrictive. Dont you think you should campaign for greater freedom of the Internet? Our focus is to push levers that can help make the biggest differences. We want to help bring down barriers to net connectivity -physical, social and financial. As far as legal systems are concerned, they tend to have a very local context. Facebook is fundamentally an American company . Of course, we have a strong and expanding presence in India. We can help in the debate on Internet freedom but Id be wary of trying to push for changes in laws. We would rather focus on serving people here, within the laws that they have chosen for themselves.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 01:16:58 +0000
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