Jana, a Boston-based start-up that seeks to provide free and unrestricted Internet access, has raised $57 million in a funding round led by Verizon Ventures.
The funds will help accelerate Jana’s expansion into emerging markets and assist the company in addressing the need for free Internet data around the world, it said in a statement.
In addition to investing in technology, the start-up plans to use the money to officially expand into China, “a market that will experience a 191% increase in mobile ad spend by 2018”, Jana said on its blog.
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The news comes just over a week after India’s telecom regulator barred the practice of differential pricing for data usage.
The ruling effectively banned Facebook’s Free Basics, which offered users free access to a bouquet of select sites, not to the whole Internet.