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India On Media |
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| Technology
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| Mark Zuckerberg Meets IT Minister |
| Mark Zuckerberg Meets IT Minister About India Plans
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| INDIA
, 10-October-2014
13:22:59 PM |
| Mark Zuckerberg, the 30-year-old founder of Facebook, met this morning with IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
It was a meeting between a government for whom "Digital India" is a priority and a tech giant looking to expand considerably in developing countries.
"Mark's interest in India impressed me. Facebook wants to work with the Digital India program and the Indian government is happy to support them in their launch of internet.org," said the minister. A tweet from his office added that Mr Zuckerberg had told the minister, "India is the top most priority for Facebook."
The three broad areas of consensus that seem to have emerged in the meeting between the two sides:
1) The government will support Facebook on their internet.org project in India, which aims to roll out 'free' internet and allow those currently not online to access certain free services.
2) Facebook has been asked to share information about the solar-powered drones it's working on - these could potentially help connect those areas which have no infrastructure, cables, etc.
3) Facebook has been asked to partner with the government's own NOFN (national fibre optic network) initiative which aims to spread hi-speed connectivity to nearly 3 lakh gram panchayats by 2017, to which Facebook has agreed. Zuckerberg said, "We're excited to help out in whatever way we can."
But there are some concerns about how internet.org could give Facebook the power to kill the idea of a neutral Internet-access ecosystem. What does that mean? Internet.org allows Facebook to expand its dominance in India and also generate new users to their service. The provision of free internet will be done in an arrangement between Facebook and telecom operators.
But if Zuckerberg puts a few services only in his 'free' or subsidised data plan, the principle called net-neutrality breaks, say some
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