We recently covered the growing interest in the internet among India’s rural population, as those regions are projected to have 24 million rural internet users by year’s end.
Out of 573 million mobile users, most of them are on low-end phones without a browser. There’s a need to figure out how to bring them online.
Telco Bharti Airtel announced today that it is bringing Facebook to the masses via a USSD menu-based system. Users need only dial *325# (or *fbk# on many handsets) to access Facebook services without the need for any internet data plan. The system will allow users to ‘Like,’ post to walls, find and add friends, and view notifications. The service will cost 1 INR per day, or about two cents.
This is not the first effort in India to bring internet content to low-end phones. We recently reported on Indiatimes’ SMS browser that also includes Facebook access.
For Airtel, this marks its second Facebook-related effort in recent months. In April the company partnered with Zoomin.com to allow users to print their Facebook photos.
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