"Wikipedia Zero" will be free for Wikipedia for developing countries Wikipedia Zero ends in 2018

The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia", is a project to make free communication charges for Wikipedia mainly in developing countries "Wikipedia ZeroAnnounced to end in 2018.

Building for the future of Wikimedia with a new approach to partnerships - Wikimedia Blog
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/16/partnerships-new-approach/

Discuss strategies of future directions and strategiesWikimedia 2030In accordance with the direction defined by the Wikimedia Foundation on February 16, 2018, announced the end of Wikipedia Zero in the official blog. Wikipedia Zero was a project that started in 2012, aiming to prepare an environment where Wikipedia can be accessed equally worldwide by removing the "high mobile communication cost" barrier.

It is not very strong that access to Wikipedia is a financial burden in developed countries of the world including Japan, because the development of the net environment is very advanced. However, in countries where the economy is in the process of developing, the maintenance of the data communication network has not kept up, so many people are accessing the net via a mobile communication network such as a smartphone. And since the cost of the communication is a burden to users, the Wikimedia Foundation creates cooperative relationships with telecommunications companies etc. in each country so that the communication fee generated for accessing Wikipedia is notified to the user We have promoted the effort not to request.

ByMartin Knudsen

Wikipedia Zero partnered with 72 countries and 97 businesses in the six years since the start of the project and has set up an environment that allows about 800 million people to access Wikipedia for free. However, since 2016, the interest in this program has declined, and in the year 2017, no new partner finally appeared and it seemed that many of the existing partner relationships also ended in 2018 Thing.

Against this background, the Wikimedia Foundation blog posts that the need for free access has decreased due to changes in the environment of mobile communications, and that Wikipedia itself is not well known. The foundation has promoted activities in the world to promote Wikipedia to more people, has achieved certain results in Iraq and Nigeria, etc. From now on, with reference to the achievement, "To access to knowledge It is said that we will pursue efforts to eliminate it as "the barrier of.