Facebook launched a project with free internet access called Discover. So far, it only works in Peru and provides very little free traffic, but this in itself means that the social network has returned to its long-standing idea of the Internet for everyone. Discover is now available in Android as well as Web applications and works with four carriers. Access to applications is preserved to any sites and is not charged, but there are restrictions on content. Video, music and other heavy formats are simply not supported. The volume limits for everything else are 10 MB per day.
In a statement, Facebook emphasizes that its product is primarily intended for a situation where a user has run out of paid traffic but needs to stay connected. It is obvious that the costs of the operators Facebook will somehow compensate and I must say that this is not the first attempt by the world's main social network to provide access to the Internet for everyone.
For the first time, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, spoke about this seven years ago. Then he announced a large-scale project called Internet.org, which was aimed at first of all giving access to the network to those people who were still deprived of it. Facebook even planned to distribute the internet using special satellites or drones. However, the project within the framework in which he was conceived to be so implemented and failed. In particular, because he was criticized for violating the so-called principle of net neutrality - access was not free to all sites. The list was formed by Facebook itself and, for example, not a single competing social network got there. As a result, the initiative earned only in sixteen countries, including Belarus, but never became widespread. In India, it was completely banned. The local authorities decidedthat it violates the principles of competition, and now Facebook seems to have revised the conditions, at least through the Discover application it will be possible to go to any site, and not just to specially selected Facebook.
It should be noted that this project is to some extent similar to an initiative with free access to socially significant resources in Russia. The experiment was launched on April 1, but so far, as they say, there are some rough edges in the implementation of the project. For example, providers complain about the lack of a complete list of IT addresses, access to which should not be charged. And social networks have not yet created free versions of sites without video. TV channels, in turn, complain about the lack of technical requirements for such sites, but the story is larger and, most importantly, unlimited.
The Russian navigation system GLONASS is considering monetizing the big data it collects. According to Kommersant, the system operator is currently studying the proposal for the sale of impersonal information on the movement of vehicles. Here you need to understand that the satellite navigation system itself cannot collect any data. This is a one-way communication. We are talking about the data that is sent to the system by the equipment installed on cars, including at the request of Russian legislation. This traffic information is reportedly planned to be monetized. This may be of interest, for example, to insurance companies or other agencies that buy the same kind of data from cellular companies. According to estimates, GLONASS can earn about 300 million rubles on Big data next year.