Facebook’s Zuckerberg both woos and lashes out at phone industry

The Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made efforts to extend an olive branch to the mobile phone companies on Monday, on which the famous social networking company relies excessively but are also among the company’s biggest critics. As he was speaking for the third straight year to an annual gathering of telecoms executives at the Mobile World Congress, Zuckerberg has completely shown that his company can be a valuable, if truculent, ally to wireless industry.

Zuckerberg has described about a new project that Facebook is working on with the major telecom players like Nokia, Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom & Intel in order to help build the far faster mobile networks at lower prices. Zuckerberg has challenged the priorities for next generation 5G networks that the IT industry is gearing up to provide around the year 2020. He has called them the faster connections for the rich people & has said that the companies can make much more efforts to finish the job of making this sure that everyone around the globe gets an internet access. Around 4 billion people do not have an access to the internet, he also noted.

The Telecom operators complain about the companies like Facebook & Google Inc. that they provide data heavy mobile services which are effectively free-loading on the big investments which they should make to keep fixed line & the mobile networks from getting overloaded. Further complicating his relationships with the telecom industry, Zuckerberg has said that video will be the next big driver for the growth of Facebook which puts more pressure on the existing networks. Its users watch much more than hundred million hours of video every day.

By criticizing the industry for its failure to do more to reach the unconnected populations, Zuckerberg has a leading proponent of new virtual reality cameras which he said can be a killer app for the 5G but that would place vast new demands on the networks. He has also protected the Facebook’s Free Basics program via whom the company works with operators in the emerging markets to provide a pared back free internet service to reach the consumers who are not able to afford the data plans.

The Indian government has introduced some rules to block the internet services from having distinct pricing policies for accessing the different parts of a web, who are effectively shuttering the ‘Free Basics’ program in that country which is one of Facebook’s most relevant emerging markets.