Hacker News Reader

Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

The real question is, will facebook lobby against, and attempt to disallow, free community / coop network access ?

It's one thing to trick a bunch of poor people into thinking you're giving them free Internet access ... it's still free.

It's quite another to then shackle them by manipulating their legal system into disallowing any other free options.

I have a lot on my plate right now, but it sure would be interesting to do a very small scale proof of concept free wifi mesh anywhere in India ... just to see who that pisses off ... I see my favorite bulk IP provider (he.net) has zero presence in India, so that doesn't make things quick and simple ... we'll see ...

View on HN

Hundreds of millions of people in India don't even have access to electricity, let alone internet. The Indian government is extremely corrupt and over-regulating. They have failed to bring modernity to a billion people. That's the context here. From what I can tell, Free Basics is a market solution that will allow a bunch of self-interested parties to bring connectivity to people who would probably never get it otherwise.

If there are all of these other alternatives, why doesn't someone set them up as a competitor to Free Basics. No one would use a limited service like Free Basics if they had free access to "real" internet access.

What makes you think Free Basics is doing anything about electricity or connectivity? It is just zero-rating for Facebook & partner apps, riding on top of infrastructure and services built by existing telecom networks in the country with the "extremely corrupt" and "failed" government.

Why the scare quotes around "extremely corrupt"? Do you really think otherwise? India is notorious for pervasive total corruption from top to bottom.

Facebook is not doing anything about electricity; I mention that statistic to demonstrate how modern infrastructure has failed to reach a huge portion of Indians. Facebook has come up with a business model that can reach people that don't have the ability to pay out of pocket for ANY connectivity. By making it profitable for telecoms to serve these people, Free Basics would encourage that infrastructure to expand to the one billion people it hasn't reached.

I'm quoting your phrases to contrast that the fact that, notwithstanding governmental failure and corruption, the reason Facebook can do this at all is because the spread of mobile phones and internet access in India has been a major success story. There are about 900 million mobile connections, and internet adoption is accelerating, with nearly 100 million users added in an year (this is close a third of the total internet user base, so we're talking double-digit growth over 20%.)

Facebook has not come up with a business model that makes it profitable for telecoms to serve people. They've just used their negotiating power, PR resources, government and corporate lobbying to convince telecoms to zero-rate Free Basics, calling it philanthropy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com