Wikimedia Foundation is dropping Wikipedia Zero

Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Zero is going to bid farewell this year.

Wikipedia Zero was created in 2012 to address the high mobile data costs globally. Wikimedia Foundation has partnered with over 97 mobile carriers in 72 countries to provide access to Wikipedia to more than 800 million people free of mobile data charges. However, in 2016, the company has seen a significant drop off in adoption and interest in the program.

According to Wikimedia Foundation, one of the critical issues why they are discontinuing Wikipedia Zero is that there’s a low awareness of Wikipedia outside of North America and Europe, albeit there had been successes in some countries like in Iraq and Nigeria.

“These successes have given us several ideas for where we may take our partnership work next, and over the coming year, we will explore other ways we can leverage the findings from our research and the Wikipedia Zero program to direct future work with partners,” said the company.

Source: Wikimedia Foundation