Facebook Inc plans to scale up its service to offer free basic Internet on mobile phones after introducing the application in 17 developing countries in the past one year, Reuters reported on Monday.
In a blog post released to mark the first year of the initiative, Facebook said it would open a portal allowing any mobile operator to offer the service under its Internet.org platform.
Facebook currently partners with specific operators to operate the service in different countries.
Internet.org has brought over nine million people online over the past year, Chris Daniels, vice president of product for Internet.org, according to Reuters, said on Monday. Facebook developed the platform with six technology partners to bring an estimated 4.5 billion unconnected people online.
Beneficiaries are mainly in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
It offers pared-down web services for free to users, along with access to Facebook’s own social network and messaging services.
Facebook’s blog post said that in the past year, the service had bought new users on mobile networks in average, over 50 per cent faster, and that more than half of the people using Internet.org are paying for data to access the wider Internet within 30 days.
“This is really a customer- acquisition tool for mobile operators, and the benefit of offering a very light amount of free data to them is to bring more paying subscribers to their networks,” Daniels said, in a phone chat from Nairobi, where he is attending a summit.
Facebook was not paying for any of the data being used to access the service, he said.
The Internet.org application, launched in India in February in partnership with Reliance Communications, faced backlash with a number of leading technology and Internet firms pulling out of the service after activists claimed it violated the principles of neutrality of the Internet.
