Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman and chief executive officer of Facebook, on Monday said he aimed in principle to deliver internet access to five billion people across the world within a short time.
Addressing a session on the opening day of World Mobile Congress, one of the biggest global telecom events being held in Barcelona, Zuckerberg said there were three key aspects to reducing the cost of internet access: decreasing cost of internet infrastructure, increasing data efficiency and increasing the efficiency of the up-sell to subscriptions.
After reaching the mark of one billion users, Zuckerberg and his team reportedly decided on connecting the people who remained unconnected to the internet. Currently Facebook has 1.2 billion subscribers.
He requested the businesspeople and the operators concerned to offer proper data packs for the unconnected people.
“If you did not grow up with access to the internet, you may not know why you would want a data plan; here, operators have duty to offer proper data pack,” he added.
The 29-year old entrepreneur also said Facebook was discussing possibilities of working with different countries on the issue
“For the next year, we are really just looking to work with maybe three or five countries that are really serious about connecting everyone in their country to services,” he said.
Zuckerberg said his vision for Facebook and its associated companies such as Whatsapp, was to connect everybody in the world.
At the session, most of the questions directed at Zuckerberg – one of the co-founders of Facebook – were related to his company’s recent acquisition of WhatsApp for $19bn.
“WhatsApp is a great fit for us. Already half a billion people use it for messaging. It is the most engaging app we have ever seen exist on mobile by far. About 70% people, who are using WhatsApp, use it every day, which kind of blows away everything else that is out there.”
Zuckerberg – who was worth £11.5bn as of September last year – said one of the big important pillars of the deal with WhatsApp was that it would operate autonomously.
“The vision is to keep the service the same,” he added.
Zuckerberg said he believed that Facebook needed to form partnerships, because no single company could control everything by itself.
“We are really not on a path to connect everyone unless something pretty dramatic changes,” he added.
Journalist and tech experts had to wait around three hours for the chance to attend the session by Zuckerberg, which began at 6pm Barcelona local time.