Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Travels To Colombia, Announces Internet.org App

Today, at an event in Bogotá, Colombia, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President Juan Manuel Santos announced the availability of Facebook’s Internet.org app for Tigo customers in Colombia. Zuckerberg hosted a live question & answer session at Bogotá’s Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, one of the city’s principal universities.

Through the app, Tigo customers in Colombia will have free access to government services including: Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Educación, an education assessment service and Agronet, a service that provides information on agriculture and rural development.

This is the first time the Internet.org app is available in Latin America, and it’s also the first to include government services as part of the other free basic services in the areas of education, health, communication, jobs, finance, and local information.

The full list of free services includes:

• 1doc3
• 24 Symbols
• AccuWeather
• Agronet
• BabyCenter & MAMA
• Facebook
• Girl Effect
• Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Educación
• Messenger
• Mitula
• Para la Vida
• Su Dinero
• Tambero.com
• UNICEF
• Wikipedia
• YoAprendo

Facebook announced plans to broaden and expand accessibility and functionality to the services in the future.

“Internet.Org is a Project that looks to give access to millions of people in the world that don’t have access, because of cost, to this marvelous world of the internet. Giving them access expands the internet,” explained President Santos. “This has marvelous positive effects in terms of equity and education because it’s going to permit all the Colombians who have low end cellular plans without full internet access to now have access to various content.”

The Internet.org app as released in Colombia via Tigo

Headline photo credit: César Carrión-SIG