Bharti Airtel Ltd.

Bharti Airtel and Facebook have tied up to launch Free Basics app, Facebook’s net neutrality violating platform, to 17 South African countries by March 2016. The company and Facebook have partnerships in 6 countries.

The Free Basics app is a part of the social network company’s initiative to deliver basic Internet connection and applications to the entire world called Internet.org. The app offers a peak into the web for unconnected people in developing countries, with a combination of free services that they can use, without any data charges like Facebook, yep, and Wikipedia.

The Internet.org service will be live in Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and Uganda. Facebook will also be launching a satellite to provide internet coverage (unclear if this is the Internet or Internet.org) to remote areas in Sub Saharan Africa from the next year.

Bharti Airtel is a leading integrated telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top 5 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers.