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Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. Photo: John Davidson

Wikipedia co-founder and influential technology entrepreneur Jimmy Wales has slammed the federal government's plan to make telcos store the metadata of every phone and internet user as a "human rights violation" and is considering the launch of his new mobile service in Australia.

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Fairfax Media,Mr Walesopened up about his views on high-speed internet and data retention.

Mr Wales is co-chairman atThe People's Operator (TPO), which is a mobile service provider in Britain with a market capitalisation of 98 million ($190 million) that gives 10 per cent of every customer's bill to the charity of their choice. A quarter of overall profits go to a pool of charities picked by the company and it is weighing an entry into the Australian market.

"Australia is very high on our list because while the social media stuff we're building is designed to be multilingual in the long run, in the first cut it's English," he said. "So it's much easier to drop in an Australian partner and we'd be keenly interested in an Australian partner."

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TPO is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which means it resells services that are based on another carrier's network. The company will launch in the United States in the next three months.

"The jump from one market to two is bigger than the jump from the second to the third because of all the reconfiguring we've done it all becomes easier,"he said. "After we get launched in the US we'll have to take a deep breath.

"Once we're there we will be looking to other markets and within six months or a year we'll be hoping to launch somewhere else."

He said the telco would decide on its next launch targets by November at the latest and had confidentially met with several telecommunications company chief executives during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales slams federal government data retention laws