internet

Here’s a summary from TechCrunch about this morning’s announcement:

Facebook has just announced a partnership with Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera and Qualcomm to launch Internet.org, a project aimed at bringing affordable Internet access to the 5 billion people without it. The companies will work together on data-compression technologies and cheap, high-quality smartphones to make the web cheaper.

While it might seem like the whole world is connected, just one-third of the globe’s population has Internet access, and adoption is only growing at 9 percent. Internet.org aims to speed up that rate.

This could be pretty exciting if they actually follow-through.

The New York Times also published a good story on the project, along with a very good world map showing levels of Internet access by country.

Here’s the new organization’s promotional video, which is very well done:

I’m adding this post to The Best Sites To Learn About The Internet.