Indian Regulator Temporarily Suspends Facebook’s Free Basics
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Lets look at two extreme scenarios.
->India without net neutrality: Everyone has free Facebook. "Free basics" didn't help in advancing electrification of the country but it did provide free facebook/wikipedia to everyone. So 30% of the country is still in dark. But 50% of the rest of India doesn't pay for internet and it thinks there is no need to because that is ALL the internet has to offer. A young founder launches a new education app to teach reading/writing to poor villagers. But she first needs to get a 'license' from facebook. Facebook doesn't think it is a good idea for its users to 'waste' time on other services instead of watching ads on FB, so it declines. Startups don't receive as much funding because of the 'licensing' issues and there aren't as many Indian tech companies as there could've been. News is censored by Facebook and Facebook can now influence Indian politics. 100,000 fewer jobs were created because the Indian tech scene didn't take off.
->India with net neutrality: 50% of the country cannot pay for internet. They still don't have access to internet. They use other forms of communication to get their daily, unfiltered news. The startup scene in India is growing at its natural pace and the culture has become more innovative. In another 10-15 years everyone will have internet. 100's of thousands of poor were lifted out of poverty due to tech jobs in India.
One is a short term 'fix' which ruins the future. Another is a little bit harder but provides for a better future.
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3xrzly/facebook_allo...
Indians were taken aback by the amount of money Facebook chose to spend to advertise Free Basics. Premium Billboards, 2 page advertisements on major publications, other ads...They must have a plan to make profit out of all this spending. They should come clean on it in their ads.
So you can either afford hardware and internet, or you can't afford internet in which case you also can't afford the hardware, so the free internet is useless.
Assuming their motives are truly altruistic, making internet free doesn't make any sense!
India desperately needs faster internet rather than free internet. If we assume even the cheapest hardware, say a laptop costing less than 300$, the internet costs in a range of 7$ to 45$ a month (inr to usd conversion estimates, might vary). The faster connection u want, the more u have to pay. Sadly, the avg internet speed of our country is at the very bottom of global rankings. If they really are altruistic, they should provide faster internet in cheaper deals.
How? What I get here is INR 275/GB which is $6/GB (for 3G), and approx. INR 100/GB for Edge.
Anyway, I came to posit a different question. How much would it cost if it were a nonprofit that provides the internet access? What kind of margins are made on top of the prepaid data plans we're using?
In poorer regions Indian government tries to subsidise it as well, and ends up with loses every year (barring 2015), so I guess we can approximate it to a non-profit org?
1. http://bsnl.in/opencms/bsnl/BSNL/services/mobile/3g_prepaid_...
You're off by three orders of magnitude.
The majority of the content on my Facebook feed is links to external websites. I'm skeptical of this argument that poor people will be forever satisfied with just chatting and browsing Facebook and will never upgrade to full internet.
It's not just Facebook that's a part of Free Basics, it is Facebook, Wikipedia, and a bunch of other services that are "approved" by Facebook. So the chance is greater that people will become used to these free services (not just Facebook) being perceived as the Internet.
A lot of users in these countries answer yes to the question "Facebook is the internet", and claim they never follows links out of Facebook. Of cause these answers reveal widespread ignorance, and it may be that they don't know if they leave Facebook or not, but it does mean that Facebook is the gateway to Internet for them. Thus a lot of users will stay satisfied with internet.org, especially if that is what most people in their local communities use.
[1] http://qz.com/579502/the-winners-and-losers-of-2015s-10-most...
AOL's walled garden didn't stop people exploring the big wide world, it was a gateway drug.
For many it may have been a gateway to facebook ;)
Not sure if you are joking, but with features like "Instant Articles", Facebook has every reason to keep people on facebook.com rather than sending them to external websites.
When you are locked down in a walled garden that allows messaging (within the garden) and every other service is blocked, people will simply believe that walled garden is all there is.
I think you underestimate people's intelligence. More so, if they only want to use Facebook, or don't want to use anything else enough to pay for it, what's the problem?
>A young founder launches a new education app to teach reading/writing to poor villagers. But she first needs to get a 'license' from facebook.
Only if Facebook is the only ISP, which could only happen if government passed a law or regulation that made that so. Or if people are not interested in anything else, in which case they should not be forced to pay for anything else.
>They use other forms of communication to get their daily, unfiltered news.
Are you implying they wouldn't without net neutrality?
>The startup scene in India is growing at its natural pace and the culture has become more innovative
Not, it isn't. It would be more innovative if it was forced to compete with Facebook.
In Brazil where net neutrality is sort of in place the only thing that happened was people being deprived of "free WhatsApp + Facebook" mobile data plans (which didn't forbid them from acquiring a more expensive plan to access other things as you suggest it would!). Now you just have to pay expensive prices even if you just want to chat with your friends.
Just FYI, startups in India already go head-to-head with Facebook and Amazon. What Free Basics does is make them compete for preferential treatment by network operators, which changes the whole game.
>I think you underestimate people's intelligence. More so, if they only want to use Facebook, or don't want to use anything else enough to pay for it, what's the problem?
I think this is totally possible, not at 50% though. Imagine the people who have never used Internet before and are not-so-educated. If Free basics is what they are going to use for the first time, it's possible for them to think that what they get to use through that, is all of the Internet.
Would people have moved to Facebook from Myspace if they had to pay $10 per month just to access it? Would people have tried Google if they had to pay $10 per month to access it?? This is a tax on innovation. The innovation from big players doesn't get taxed while a founder would need to innovate 100x instead of the current 10x to make people move. Founders have limited resources. Creating 100x innovation will take a lot more time than getting people to move to 10x innovation, making some money and innovating further. What do you think this would do to the angels in India who have recently started investing in startups rather than gold/land/stocks? They would go back to land/stocks.
> Only if Facebook is the only ISP, which could only happen if government passed a law or regulation that made that so.
Facebook intends to use data services (3g,4g) to deploy its free basics. There aren't many companies providing data services because of obvious spectrum limitations.
>Are you implying they wouldn't without net neutrality?
They primarily get information on radio and newspapers. If those sources are corrupt, lets not add another corrupt source into the mix.
>Not, it isn't. It would be more innovative if it was forced to compete with Facebook.
Really? There was a time in India when you had to be REALLY REALLY REALLY innovative (in many different ways) to merely get a license to start a business from the govt. We called it 'license raj'. You know what it did. It killed all the innovation. You have to let smallest of innovations thrive for them to grow into bigger ones!!
>Now you just have to pay expensive prices even if you just want to chat with your friends.
Better than the possibility of being stuck with that same 'chat' for the next 20 years. India needs jobs more than 'free chat'. Jobs will come from Indian companies. And Indian companies cannot thrive unless the field is even. Plus, its not about Indian vs Foreign. If a small guy produces 2x innovation, his innovation should triumph over facebook. Facebook's coffers shouldn't prevent progress happening in the world. That 2x innovation, if given a chance will grow to 200x.
A major reason Facebook is doing this is that they see an investment opportunity. In some countries the majority of people are using the internet, but can't distinguish the internet from Facebook. That is any techno-monopolist's wet dream, and it is exactly what they are going for across the entire developing world.
I know for a fact that some people working at Facebook think they are doing good and being charitable by supporting internet.org. It is extremely hard to convince anyone who stands to gain from internet.org that this could be a net negative for the people on the receiving end. I've been called arrogant and out of touch for arguing this. To me, it is disturbing that this is seen as a world-changing act of charity, but some people clearly feel that way. I'm relieved that regulators are standing up against Facebook, and I hope they stand strong, but I have doubts. We may be losing the free internet and weakly accepting the rule of a new emperor.
Digital imperialism is the next step up from techno-monopolist.
AOL tried that (except for the free part) and couldn't pull it off. In the early days of AOL there was no way to get on the internet.
I doubt Indians will be satisfied with a tiny walled garden, even if it means they have to pay a little to get out.
How is this different from the iPhone and the closed app store? If people don't like closed app store eco-system of the iPhone, they buy Android. Similarly, if the poor don't like Free Basics, they will opt out of it for a competitor.
Also, the licensing thing will be less of an issue, if Facebook commits to a transparent, fast, and preferably automated process of gaining their zero-rating.
Me: if you guys prevail in enabling zero-rating it even damages Facebook.
WeChat could be zero-rated & undermine WhatsApp
Them: so you're saying it could foster competition?
Me: it means anyone launching an app will have to cut a business deal with an ISP.
Completely subverts the value of the internet
Another note, Facebook is spending millions to lobby & market "Free Basics" in India.
More examples of their machinations, stressing on the word "accidental" : http://recode.net/2015/12/21/facebook-accidentally-asks-u-s-... .
"Free basics" is free because someone is paying for it (in this case facebook). Banning it would not make normal internet available at same price point to poor people. The choice here for these poor people is between "free basics" and "no internet". I personally think they are better off with "free basics".
My driver has Whatsapp but no data connection as he does not want to pay (Rs 120) $2 per month extra. Instead he connects to wi-fi at my home whenever necessary. I think he will be better off with free basics.
In a moral standpoint asking telecom companies to forgo their profits to impose our own view of internet on them through government coercion seems like theft to me. Since spectrum is public property government could have imposed such a restriction while demanding bids for it but adding this constraint later seems like a robbery.
> just an effort to make Facebook more popular
These things are not mutually exclusive.
That said, Facebook is not good.
Free Basics is being advertised in metropolitan areas, not poor villages. Why waste money advertising it on TV Channels which only the elites watch? Poor people cannot afford subscriptions to those channels. Yet they're running Free Basics ads on those channels. Why don't they limit Free Basics to first time FB sign ups? Why are they targeting people who already have internet connections? Majority of people who will sign up for Free Basics are the ones who already have internet. That is exactly what Zuck wants. No advertising money to be made in remote villages. If it was...Facebook would be in the villages...it is NOT!
The fact is that Facebook is not committed to Net Neutrality.
Even in First World, people are cutting cord and using their mobile phones as sole Internet connection, that Internet is capped, has priority traffic etc.
I prefer net neutrality, but am willing to give some exceptions esp. when catering to lower economic spectrum, who themselves cannot exchange money for Internet connection.
As a compromise, free access to only non-commercial non-profit entities/websites that offer beneficial information is acceptable although not ideal.