Jana is a Boston-based technology company that wants to help smartphone users in emerging countries get free , ad-supported Internet service. The company’s search engine, MCent , can access all kinds of sites and displays a variety of ads, including those for the NBA, Amazon, and Saavn, an Indian music streaming site. The ad revenue is then used to pay for the data used by consumers . The technology can identify the phone number and network and top up the credit on the person’s account. “We started this project to offer truly unrestricted Internet access to billions of people ,” Jana founder Nathan Eagle said , according to FastCompany.com . The company developed this model a decade ago, offering users Internet access after completing surveys for organizations like the UN, but it couldn’t support high levels of users this way.
This is not the first time a company has tried to offer free internet service. Facebook tried to offer a free internet alternative in India through its Free Basics app , but the company did not do very well. This app, designed to provide internet access to families in poverty, only allowed access to certain websites, such as Facebook. India banned the service, and any others like it, because it violated the so-called net neutrality . This basic principle states that internet service providers cannot favor particular sites.
According to Jana, they can make more money from ads than they spend to uganda phone number offset the cost of data. Advertisers are spending around $200 billion in emerging markets , often on traditional platforms. “If we can redirect 10% of that spend, from the big media owners, and go directly to the very consumers that each brand is trying to reach, we could provide a billion people with free, unrestricted internet access.”
The company launched the system in India last July and, in just three months, has gained a million users . In fact, every six weeks the number of users practically doubles. The savings can be significant, since, in many cases, users spend 10% of their daily salary on internet connection . In emerging countries, where smartphone growth is very rapid, many users cannot afford data plans. In this regard, in India, where a large part of the population lives on about 30 dollars a month, a month of phone can cost 3 dollars. Now, Jana provides free internet service to more than 40 million people in 15 different markets . In addition, they plan to expand in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America . According to Eagle, they could reach a billion users in about five years , if they continue to grow at the same rate.
The project is similar to others, such as Project Loon , which aim to provide internet access to remote or disaster-stricken areas, but Jana aims to reach the 90% of people in emerging markets who can access the internet but cannot afford it. “These are great projects, but that is not the problem we are trying to solve .”