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Wikipedia Ceases Zero-Rating Programme

Accepted submission by canopic jug https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/icymi-mumbai-man-sets at 2018-02-20 09:22:37
Digital Liberty

The Wikimedia Foundation, most well-known for Wikipedia, has participated in zero-rating [eff.org] for long enough to see a massive decline in it being a source of visits. That settles that. So now Wikipedia is turning around and resuming its efforts to instead be available to any visitor.

After careful evaluation, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to discontinue one of its partnership approaches, the Wikipedia Zero program. Wikipedia Zero was created in 2012 to address one barrier to participating in Wikipedia globally: high mobile data costs. Through the program, we partnered with mobile operators to waive mobile data fees for their customers to freely access Wikipedia on mobile devices. Over the course of this year, no additional Wikipedia Zero partnerships will be formed, and the remaining partnerships with mobile operators will expire.

In the program’s six year tenure, we have partnered with 97 mobile carriers in 72 countries to provide access to Wikipedia to more than 800 million people free of mobile data charges. Since 2016, we have seen a significant drop off in adoption and interest in the program. This may be due, in part, to the rapidly shifting mobile industry, as well as changes in mobile data costs. At this same time, we conducted extensive research [1][2] to better understand the full spectrum of barriers to accessing and participating in Wikipedia.

Source : Building for the future of Wikimedia with a new approach to partnerships [wikimedia.org]


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