If Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Mark Zuckerberg have a common ground, it is because they intend to extend the reach of the Internet to the most marginalized areas of Mexico.
López Obrador expressed its compromise to broaden Internet connection at a meeting in Nayarit that caused controversy. He said the Mexican government would create a company to extend Internet service to 80% of the national territory that is without connection.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg’s company, Facebook, has plans to bring the Internet at low cost to Mexico and Brazil through satellite Internet.
On June 18, both characters met through a video conference in which López Obrador invited Zuckerberg to participate in this government project to extend Internet coverage in Mexico.
In the fragment that the president of Mexico shared on Twitter, he stressed that in 80% of the national territory lives the 20% of the poorest and most marginalized population of the country. All of them has no Internet connection.
López Obrador expressed that the purpose of the government of Mexico is to communicate to all the peoples, which represents more than 300K localities.
The president mentioned that Mexico has an electricity network that covers 95% of the territory. “We want to take advantage of this infrastructure so that with fiber optics and maybe some antennas, we can communicate.”
The goal of the Mexican government is to improve services such as education and health while keeping them at a low cost. The program is non-profit, although it aims to leave a margin for a sector that can pay for the service and be self-sustaining in the long term.
Lopez Obrador showed the project to Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook representatives in Mexico. In the video, we can distinguish the presence of Xóchitl Bazola-Wildman, the director of Facebook Mexico.