Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is committed to doing more to accelerate the growth of the internet in Mexico.
In a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto this week, Zuckerberg promised to expand his Internet.org global partnership to Mexico.
“The Internet offers huge opportunities for Mexico, from helping to share its talent, culture and businesses with the world and making government services more efficient,” Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page after the meeting.
Internet.org calls itself “a global partnership between technology leaders, nonprofits, local communities and experts who are working together to bring the internet to the two thirds of the world’s population that doesn’t have it.”
The project teams Facebook with six mobile phone companies: Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera Software, and Qualcomm. The aim is to “increase affordability and efficiency, and facilitate the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access.”
Zuckerberg was attending Mexico Siglo XXI organized by telecom magnate Carlos Slim’s Fundación Telmex for some 10,000 of the organization’s interns and scholarship recipients.
In his talk, Zuckerberg recognized that Mexico is more connected than most countries in Latin America but added, “it is insane that only 60 million people have access to the internet.”
Stats show that less than 50 percent of Mexicans accessed the Internet last year.
“What we really care about is connecting everyone in the world, even if it means that Facebook has to spend billions of dollars over the next decade making this happen,” Zuckerberg told the young attendees.
Facebook’s CEO said he hopes to soon conclude his company’s deal to buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars – a merger that will give the world’s largest social media network greater presence in the mobile communications sphere. “With us, people will have better resources and opportunities to connect the world,” he said.
In 2013, 37.7 million Mexican internet users connected to the Internet from their cellphones – a sharp increase of 17.7 million from the previous year.
Zuckerberg also touched on illegal immigration in the United States, saying reform was needed urgently to fix a “broken system.”