January 28, 2015, – The Valley Anguilla- Digicel and the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, announced a partnership to offer free access to Wikipedia to all Digicel customers, whether they are subscribed to a data plan or not. The collaboration is part of Wikipedia Zero, an initiative to give people unlimited access to Wikipedia free of data charges from their mobile devices, in alignment with Wikimedia’s mission to provide access to knowledge and information.
Currently an estimated 400 million mobile subscribers have free access to Wikipedia, thanks to 41 operators in 34 countries who have already joined Wikipedia Zero. The Digicel agreement will extend free mobile access to Digicel’s customers in 31 markets across the Caribbean, Central America, and Asia Pacific.
Wikipedia is the largest collection of free knowledge ever assembled. It is a collaborative creation by volunteer editors from all over the world. Across its more than 280 language versions Wikipedia contains more than 33.5 million articles, attracting nearly half a billion unique visitors every month and more than 20 billion monthly page views. Every month roughly 70,000 people actively edit Wikipedia.
“We are committed to ensuring that people not only have access to the knowledge on Wikipedia without barriers on mobile phones with no data charges, but that they can become knowledge creators themselves, and build strong communities of the future. We are therefore very excited about the collaboration with Digicel where the potential to open up the knowledge on Wikipedia to new audiences is immense” said Carolynne Schloeder, Head of Global Partnerships with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikipedia Zero is available to all Digicel prepaid & postpaid customers via a free App downloadable in the Google Play store, or at www.wikipedia.org
– Press Release
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
