One year on, Internet.org gives a billion people internet access

Mark Zuckerberg's Internet.org has come in for quite a lot of criticism since it launched. Designed to help get the entire world online, it has been argued that the program is in opposition to the idea of net neutrality and many of its backers have pulled out or complained about things since it kicked off.

But in many regards none of this matters -- it is the numbers that are important. Twelve months after the launch of Internet.org, more than a billion people have been connected to the internet free of charge. Moving into year two, the next part of the operation involves scaling things up.

Connecting the unconnected remains at the heart of going forward. The aim is now to get more partners involved and have more operators on board -- this was the reason for launching the Internet.org Platform earlier in the year. Internet.org has already spread into 17 countries, but there are many, many more to tick off the list.

Writing on Facebook, the Internet.org team says:

Internet.org brings new users onto mobile networks on average over 50 percent faster after launching free basic services, and more than half of the people who come online through Internet.org are paying for data and accessing the internet within the first 30 days. These points show that Internet.org is not only a successful tool in helping bring people online, but it is successful in showing people the value of the internet and helping to accelerate its adoption.

But however many people the program gets online, no matter how altruistic the intention may be, it's hard to imagine that Internet.org won't continue to find itself coming under fire from various quarters.

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