Facebook partnership issues white paper calling on the internet to become a “human right”

A not-for-profit organisation launched by Facebook has issued a paper calling for infrastructure to make the internet accessible to the world’s poorest 5 billion people.

The not-for-profit organisation, dubbed Internet.org, was launched last month and also includes Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung as members.

One month after its launch, the group has published a white paper looking at the infrastructure challenges involved in making the internet accessible to anyone with a phone.

“Today, only 2.7 billion people – just over one-third of the world’s population – have access to the internet. Internet adoption is growing by less than 9% each year, which is slow considering how early we are in its development,” Facebook said in a statement.

“The goal of Internet.org is to make internet access available to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected, and to bring the same opportunities to everyone that the connected third of the world has today.”

Key issues examined in the paper include making access affordable, allowing data to be used efficiently, and the infrastructure needed to support it.