14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook, one of the most popular social networking sites around the world, has just announced an initiative meant to offer a wider range of users the possibility to access its features. To be more precise, the social media destination is now available in a number of 45 countries via 50 wireless carriers free of charge for mobile phone users.
Courtesy of the recently launched 0.facebook.com, users in those countries, who are customers of the said carriers, can stay in touch with their friends via Facebook without having to pay for accessing it from their mobile phones. Moreover, it seems that the partnership between Facebook and operators around the world will bring the service to other countries too, offering fast and free access to the website.
“It's free: Thanks to the help of mobile operators we collaborated with, people can access 0.facebook.com without any data charges. Using 0.facebook.com is completely free. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites. When they click to view a photo or browse another mobile site a notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com,” a recent post on the Facebook Blog reads.
The new website is being released in addition to the already available Facebook Mobile destination, m.facebook.com, or the solution optimized for touchscreen mobile devices, touch.facebook.com. When accessing the service via these sites, users will still have to pay standard data charges, something that 0.facebook.com removes completely.
The list of carriers that offer the new 0.facebook.com site for their users can be seen in the image to the left. The site is accessible only on these carriers' networks, yet users in more countries should expect it to enjoy the feature in the near future, it seems. 0.facebook.com will soon become available via Telstra in Australia, Movistar in El Salvador, SFR in France, XL in Indonesia, DiGi in Malaysia, Telecom NZ in New Zealand, SMART in the Philippines, Vodafone in Qatar, Digicel in Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, 3 in the UK, and MTN in Cameroon and Guinea Conakry.
