After a
failed effort to offer free internet access (with strings attached) to people
in India, Facebook has now launched Express Wi-Fi, a service that lets users
log on to Wi-Fi networks hosted by local partners, for a nominal fee. And
unlike Free Basics, this program grants access to all of the web – or at least,
as much as the Indian government allows.
Following
tests that began back in 2015, Express Wi-Fi is now live across nearly 700
hotspots in four Indian states of Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan and
Meghalaya. Users can log on by purchasing physical and online vouchers that
cost between Rs. 10-20 ($0.15 – $0.30) for 0.1GB a day, or Rs. 200-300 ($3.12 –
$4.67) for 20GB for a month, from 500 brick-and-mortar stores in those states.
India isn’t
the first country where Facebook has rolled out Express Wi-Fi: it’s previously
launched the service in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Indonesia. The company
plans to connect another 20,000 hotspots across India in partnership with
telecom giant Airtel.
That’s a big
move for Facebook: the social network says it’s closing in on 2 billion users
worldwide, and India, with its population of 1.3 billion, reportedly only has
about 390 million people accessing the web at present. Clearly, it’s a huge
target for the company, and this approach could see it bring many more people
online and eventually help grow Facebook’s user base.
(Business
Insider)
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