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Reliance Communications joined hands with Facebook Inc to provide free access to 33 websites in order to garner a wider audience and customer base. These websites will be across eight categories - social media, news, career, education and knowledge, sports, health and social welfare and search engine Bing. The free websites include Facebook, ecommerce portal OLX, Cleartrip, TimesJobs, Babajob and sports website ESPN Cricinfo.

RCom Chief Executive Officer for consumer Business, Gurdeep Singh said that we are committed to launching it on pan-india level within 90 days. Further, Vice-President of Internet.org at Facebook Chris Daniels added that they are looking for more partners to join this initiative so that more people can be brought on Internet. Most of the services will be available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati and Marathi, to begin with. Reliance customers can access these websites with zero data charges at www.internet.org, or in the Internet.org Android app. Andhra Pradesh government has also incorporated its e-governance portal AP Speaks as part of this project to interact with people in the state and improve governance.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a video message said that last year his organisation had rolled out Internet.org free basic services to countries with more than 150 million people total across Africa and Latin America and more than 6 million people, who were not connected to the Internet, are now connected with it.

-By Premji