Mozilla Launches Equal Rating Innovation Challenge: A $250,000 contest including expert mentorship to spark new ways to connect everyone to the Internet

Mozilla calls upon innovators to challenge existing approaches; Submissions open today

Mountain View, California (November 01, 2016): Mozilla has announced the launch of its global Equal Rating Innovation Challenge, a competition which invites contributions on ways to provide unfettered access to  the open Internet for anyone across the globe. As part of its initiative, Mozilla has invited entrepreneurs, designers, researchers and innovators to propose creative and scalable ideas for connecting more people to the Internet, built on local knowledge and expertise.

The Equal Rating Innovation Challenge will support promising solutions through expert mentorship and funding of US$250,000 in prize monies split into three categories - Best Overall (based on scalability), Best Overall Runner-up and Most Novel Solution (based on experiment with a potential high reward).

“At Mozilla, we believe the Internet is most powerful when anyone – regardless of gender, income, or geography – can participate equally. However the digital divide remains a clear and persistent reality,” said Mozilla’s Chief Innovation Officer, Katharina Borchert, in a blog post, https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/10/13/bringing-the-power-of-the-internet-to-the-next-billion-and-beyond/. Further, she says, “This challenge is designed to spur innovations for bringing the members of the Next Billion online. The Equal Rating Innovation Challenge is focused on identifying creative new solutions to connect the unconnected. These solutions may range from consumer products and novel mobile services to new business models and infrastructure proposals.”

Mozilla has launched www.equalrating.com, a website offering educational content and background information to support the challenge. In the coming weeks, Mozilla will also stream a series of webinars stream to further inform potential applicants about the challenge details.

According to the data made available from a 2014 McKinsey report, India comes under the ‘Medium-High’ category of regions facing barriers for internet adoption. Approximately 1,424 million people are still offline with a 19% internet penetration. Broadly, the challenges are due to lack of incentives and infrastructure as well as mixed demographics. In India, open internet and net neutrality are salient subjects as the government is focused on bridging the digital divide and creating an environment where people can benefit, both personally and commercially. With this aim, the government launched its “Digital India Campaign” in 2015 to transform the country into a digitally powered knowledge economy.  

Katharina Borchert added, “Connecting the unconnected is one of the greatest challenges of our time. No one organization or effort can tackle it alone. We must come together and collaborate to build innovative and scalable ways to bring Internet access to the Next Billion - and the other billions, as well.”

Important dates:

• 1st November, 2016 – Submissions open.
• 14th November, 2016 – Judges announced.
• 6th January, 2017 (23:59GMT) – Submissions closed: Last day to submit an entry
• 17th January, 2017 – 5 semifinalists announced.
• 18th January – 8th March 2017 – Mentorship: 5 semifinalists will be provided advice and mentorship from Mozilla experts in topics such as policy, business, engineering, and design to hone their concepts.
• 9th March 2017 – Demo Day: 5 semifinalists will take part in a Demo Day to pitch their solutions to the judges. Demo Day will be livestreamed to the website.
• 10th March – 16th March 2017 – Community voting.
• 29th March 2017 – Winners announced.