BARCELONA: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has dismissed efforts by companies such as Google and his own to use balloons and satellites to reach rural populations as “fringe” technology that draws attention away from “real” work.
Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai had told at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona he was proud of the company’s record of working with telcos such as Telstra to deliver internet services using high altitude balloons as part of Project Loon.
“We’ve started large scale testing with Vodafone, Telstra, Telefonica and we think with Loon we can bring connectivity to many rural areas in the world,” Mr Pichai said. “We think the model is really beginning to work.”
He also discussed Google’s plans to launch Project Titan, which aims to turn drones into high speed mobile internet providers with test flights scheduled for May, 2015.
But Facebook’s Mr Zuckerberg was less enthused when asked about Mr Pichai’s projects and its successes at the same conference later that day.
“We’re doing experiments on helping different people connect and so is Google with balloons while we’re working on planes and satellites,” he said. “But I think that’s actually at the fringe of the real work going on.
“90 per cent of people in the world already live within range of a network and the real work happens here.”
Instead, Mr Zuckerberg was more interested in discussing ways his social networking giant could partner with telcos around the world to deliver temporary free broadband.
