Next on Mark Zuckerberg’s Itinerary: Indonesia

Zuckerberg’s trip to Indonesia started with a visit to Borobudur Saturday, and he posted a photo to Facebook, writing:

I just arrived in Indonesia and hiked up Borobudur to watch the sunrise. Tomorrow for Internet.org I’m looking forward to meeting with developers, operator partners and government leaders in Jakarta.

He posted another photo Monday morning, with Widodo, writing:

I spent the day in Jakarta meeting with developers, partners and government leaders about Internet.org.

This morning I met with President-elect Joko Widodo, and we discussed the opportunities and challenges of connecting everyone in Indonesia.

He has an amazing perspective since he ran much of his presidential election campaign through Facebook and the Internet in order to communicate directly with all 250 million Indonesians.

A hallmark of his style is “blusukan,” or impromptu walkabouts to meet Indonesian citizens. After our meeting, I joined him on a walkabout to the Tanah Abang market. It was a wonderful way to connect with people directly. He recently launched an online “e-Blusukan” so that he can connect with all Indonesians online in a similar way across the archipelago.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many people here and talk to them about how they’re using the Internet. Many are already using the Internet to build businesses, improve their communities and connect with the world. If we can connect everyone in Indonesia, these benefits will only continue to grow.

And Internet.org offered more details on its Jakarta workshop in a press release:

Facebook hosted an Internet.org developer workshop with Ericsson and XL Axiata in Jakarta, Indonesia, to work with developers on making their applications more efficient. Developers at the event have the opportunity to test their apps and measure user experience under local network conditions, and work with engineers from Facebook, Ericsson and XL on optimizing app performance and efficiency. Earlier this year, Facebook launched a series of hackathons with Ericsson focused on improving data efficiency, which led to the creation of the Internet.org Innovation Lab, a space that will give developers the ability to test their apps in real world environments at Facebook’s headquarters.

In addition to building apps that use less data, we need more efficient infrastructure to serve people in low-bandwidth areas. This means improving network performance so more people can benefit from being connected. Over the last year, Facebook worked with Ericsson and XL Axiata in Indonesia to create a methodology to analyze, monitor and improve end-to-end network performance using simulated Facebook application use cases. Through this process, the group identified user-impacting issues and addressed them throughout the network. The network-wide adjustments delivered up to 70 percent improvement in network performance from the user perspective. We now know that it is possible to increase network performance using existing network resources, which is key to helping close the connectivity gap. You can learn more about the project in an Internet.org white paper released today (embedded below) titled, “Measuring and Improving Network Performance — an Analysis of Network and Application Research, Testing and Optimization.”

Measuring and Improving Network Performance — an Analysis of Network and Application Research, Testing and…