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Comment by Leomuck | Hacker News Reader

Crazy, I've never heard of such a plan anywhere. But given how essential the internet is to everything we do on a daily basis, that makes a lot of sense. However, I would like to see the existing situation that lead to this decision. Were there many people who couldn't do things anymore due to lacking internet access? Was there public pressure to do this or did they just think it a good idea?

My assumption so far was that there are those who use the internet, they're usually fine, and those that don't - they won't benefit much. But no idea about South Korea. Anyway, cheaper and unlimited access is always a good idea!

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At the height of the pandemic, the UK mandated zero-rating data for mobile connection to .gov.uk and .NHS.uk domains, along with several other charitable sites.

(I was part of the team working on that proposal.)

Umm, was it more than an oppportunistic attack at net neurality?

UK has never had net neutrality, there are many limited data phone plans that include unlimited music/video etc

The UK does have net neutrality, and it's quite strictly regulated by Ofcom, which produces an annual report showing compliance and highlighting any issues it has investigated:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/internet-based-services/network-neu...

Things like restrictions on tethering and using a SIM in a router are forbidden.

Unlike most countries, net neutrality has never been a political football in the UK.

Ofcom groups zero rating schemes into three types:

Type one - government and NGO services (always allowed).

Type two - where categories of service (e.g. video or music streaming apps) are zero rated, but any service fitting into the category can apply to be zero rated by the network.

Type three - any other kind of zero rating.

Things like the VOXI Unlimited Social Media packages fit into Type Two, so are expressly permitted.

For the rest, Ofcom assessed the impact on consumers, which is generally low.

This is not net neutrality, all network traffic is not treated equally.

Ofcom seems to have invented their own definition of net neutrality and placed it on that website, but calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. This is tiered access.

It doesn't meet a perfect theoretical definition of net neutrality, but it's a set of defined legal limits on the extent to which providers can treat different kinds of traffic differently.

Ok but the main limit people care about is music and video streaming being treated differently

What would be the model of a country with stronger net neutrality laws? I think EU regulations are now a touch stronger than UK regulations due to post-Brexit divergence, but by world standards, the UK has strong net neutrality protections.

Net neutrality is not theoretical, it is literally the default setting.

Any deviation from that default requires special effort be taken to identify network traffic and treat it differently, and as soon as you have made that effort you cannot truthfully claim to have net neutrality. The UK does not prohibit net neutrality but it does not require it either (according to the comment I replied to which I have not verified).

I guess to me this seems a bit like saying that free markets are the default setting. We’re not in some kind of perfect state of nature. We’re in a complex interconnected society where virtually everything of any importance is regulated to some extent. What you’re saying seems like saying “as soon as you impose one regulation you no longer have a free market”.

This non sequitur strains my ability to assume good faith on your part. We're not talking about markets, we're talking about a utility.

Does your water company bill you differently depending on what you use the water for? Your gas company? Electric? This is not a complicated concept to understand, please make an effort.

It’s just an analogy. I can understand if you don’t think the analogy lands, but it hardly seems grounds for doubting good faith.

And err, yes, not everyone is billed for water or electricity on the same terms as private homes.

>This is not a complicated concept to understand, please make an effort.

You could leave this out? It’s not the most effective way to bring people round to your point of view.

The important issue of net neutrality is not so much zero rating as degradation or blocking of content and services.

The OSA has forced the reverse: sites have to be non neutral as to where their traffic is going.

This is... Shockingly reasonable. Would be perfect if it included other essential services e.g. domains used for online banking.

It’s technically problematic. The ISP should have little idea of domains you visit. And they can’t already when everything works.

Do you have heared of IP addresses and that large institutions especially government institutions have their own blocks from the address space? Mapping these is kind of easy.

They are likely behind (foreign) CDN's.

Not that there's no BYOIP and not that it's impossible to do with shared IP's

Plenty of ISPs zero rate things like Facebook and other "partners". Especially easy when they control the DNS.

meanwhile Czechia literally BANNED free Wi-Fi in restaurants and other establishments during COVID, so people will spend there less time, I understood the rationale if people already didn't have mobile data in phones anyway

other things Czech gov banned during COVID-19 was singing in public places, no kidding!

And I'm not even going to complain they banned sale of the toys, colored pencils and other items so people will spend less time in the shop, so me and kids could just look at the colored pencils behind the tape because we had to go to shop anyway.

During COVID in Singapore, music in restaurants was banned, as people may talk more loudly to compensate.

> other things Czech gov banned during COVID-19 was singing in public places, no kidding!

So, wait, no Christmas carolling? Was this the doing of Babis? Then only the drunk shall sing in public places, mainly because they're too drunk to care.

"Church services are limited to a maximum of 100 people, and singing is prohibited; the same applies to public participation in municipal and regional government meetings."

"In other regions, the operation of schools and educational facilities is being restricted in accordance with the Education Act, and that of universities in accordance with the Higher Education Act, such that singing is not part of the curriculum; furthermore, with the exception of the first stage of primary education in elementary schools, sports activities will also be temporarily excluded from the curriculum."

https://vlada.gov.cz/cz/media-centrum/aktualne/vlada-vyhlasi...

Are you part of HMG or was it at telco level ?

I was part of HMG. It was a joint effort with the telcos - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/mobile-networks-remove-da...

Oh nice. I am surprised how many HMG colleagues I bump into on HN :)

Crazy even to me, a Korean. I just woke up and saw this news on HN. Over the years I watched the price of data was going down drastically in Korea. I had always complained that data in France was much cheaper like 30gb for 10 eur. Then when I came back after around the end of pandemic, the price of data in Korea was actually quite cheap.

Do I know why? No idea. The article alluded fast AI adoption but even senior Korean citizens are all addicted to youtube videos. Soon they will start using AI. Young people are already heavily using AI for everything. So I don’t think it’s for AI adoption.

The recent hacking incidence was a big one, true. But the price had been going down even before.

Even in the US which is well behind SK in the digital curve, I’ve heard anecdotally that a huge problem with reintegrating some populations like the homeless, poor or elderly is that job applications are virtually all online now.

This, and owning a bank account, filing taxes, paying bills are all moving to internet only.

Some coffee shops in china you can't even order or pay without their app.

There are many such schemes for low income households in the united states to subsidize internet access for students. There were some federal and other programs.

Probably LTE is cheaper to deploy then actually wiring a house up anyway.

The federal plans still exist, and the wires are already there in most homes, so most providers offer a tiny plan to fit the subsidy.

I work with a US non-profit that has provided both free and very low cost Internet access over the last 4 years (fixed home wifi, no phone). We have primarily used 4G/5G, including private networks built and owned by the non-profit, public/private partnerships with cities that own a 4G network, and now primarily very low cost wifi hotspots serviced by a major carrier.

> But given how essential the internet is to everything we do on a daily basis, that makes a lot of sense.

Well, water is certainly more essential, yet it isn't free.

Food isn't free. Shelter isn't free.

Besides, the services you'd use over this free connection aren't (necessarily) free.

Its not unreasonable to suspect some other agenda, like easier propaganda, subsidising of social media, ...

Maybe the reduction in gov paper forms printing and processing, offset the mobile costs.

I often hear the argument of savings in printing and postage.

Having seen all the over budget, years delayed or completely failed IT projects in the public sector, I wonder whether there are any savings at all in the end.

(Perspective from a couple of EU countries at different degrees of digitalization)

Actually food water and shelter are free to those who can't afford it in many developed countries.

Oi! Fair. I didn't want to imply that access to water, shelter and food was less important. Not at all! It's crazy that we have more than enough for everybody and still people die from hunger, thirst, conditions. I was only trying to say that any effort in the right direction is appreciated. You are correct in pointing out other motives though. That's what I asked myself as well.

Canada requires mobile service providers to have a 35$ a month data plan, and the low-income support payments will add 35$ a month to the base rate if you provide a cell phone bill.

TIL, it's not a perfect solution but given how rough telecoms are here it's at least something I guess.

Perhaps there is something more fundamentally wrong here if the government subsidizes privatized infrastructure that is making billions in profit? In the early days of private radio stations governments required all kinds of things to the public's benefit from them, the reasoning was the inherently limited medium of the airways, how quaint.

> Were there many people who couldn't do things anymore due to lacking internet access?

Almost anythijg now requires internet access. Banking, schools, parking, transport tickets, almost any form of communication with almost any organization (besides phone, but some companies don't even have phone numbers anymore) etc.

Maybe not general data cap exemption but for as long as I remember a lot of carriers in Europe whitelist certain apps that people think of as "essential" that work even when you've reached your data limit - such as WhatsApp and Messenger. Perhaps there are certain applications specific to South Korea that people think as essential/universal and expect them to work without a data plan (even maybe related to the digital ID thing they have there).

Here in Spain a few years ago some ISP's just put a data cap about 2.7KBPS (2-3G?) and call it a day. Enough for text sites, messages and the like. But if you were smart (mosh, NNTP)... you could connect to some public Unix servers and fire up Lynx/Links at crazy speeds under a Tmux window and be able to read sites/blog posts and the like. And with edbrowse, even comment on some simple JS sites.

With some cachés set for my audio player I could even listen to some odd Avant Gardé radio streams -think Frank Zappa like- at http://dir.xiph.org with 16 KBPS quality in OPUS format. Not totally robotic, it sounded better than old MP3's at 32KBPS.

But to really reach the poor people, you would also need to deploy phones, not only data/traffic/WiFi: For sure for lot of people 10-20 USD monthly bill is already too high, but buying a phone that is somehow not outdated and capable of running all the apps needed, this is a much higher barrier (of lets say 200-300 USD for a somehow solid phone that will last some time9

Phones can be had for a lot less than that - you can find decent enough used phones that will last a year or two for under $100, which is cheap enough that almost everyone can scrounge together the money for it.

I’m guessing you’ve never been poor. For people living in poverty, finding $100 for a one time purchase is extremely difficult - much more than say finding $10 per month. Finance options are notoriously predatory and expensive. Plus if it only lasts a year then the amortized cost is about the same as the hypothetical cheap service.

Thanks! Exactly, this is what I was trying to tell: Its the barrier of accumulating the "once a time payment" in that volume, because methods for savings are not applied (for several reasons, unregular income, too low income, debt, drugs etc.)

By “under $100”, I meant that there are options at $20. Yes, you can get a smartphone for twenty bucks.

I agree that there are some people who can’t even find $20 to get a smartphone, but they’re going to be a small minority of even the very poor.

A weird part about the modern world is that a cell phone is incredibly cheap compared to shelter, food, or just about anything else. You’d be surprised how many homeless folks have phones.

> of lets say 200-300 USD for a somehow solid phone

More like 30-50 USD, judging by the research I did in 5 minutes (or 20-30 USD if you agree to a used phone).

No, I understand that Americans love to pay several times more for their houses, healthcare, education, coffee and everything else simply on principle, pretending that there are no other options, but you can literally google the largest phone manufacturers in the world and look at the prices of their current starter models.

And yes, we are talking about full-fledged smartphones that are quite pleasant to use, with up-to-date hardware and the latest versions of the operating system. Not some outdated torture devices with zero reliability.

> google the largest phone manufacturers in the world and look at the prices of their current starter models.

for most people at the very low end of low income and low education group, this is a huge barrier.

Look: I haven been neighbours with people who had to search their whole appartment for a working simple pen to take a note - when asking for it they looked at me like an Alien: Really poor and uneducated people have high barriers in even the simpelst things.

> for a working simple pen to take a note

Well, I guess this means that they have successfully solved their smartphone availability problem. Otherwise, note taking tasks with a pen would be more important for them.

Nobody is saying that the price of the phone isn't a barrier. What people are trying to tell you is that there's no need to lie about that price. If anything, using the real price makes it even more illustrative of how much being poor sucks!

Sure, phone choices in America are very limited compared to most of the world. But just go to walmart.com, seach for prepaid android and choose "New" condition. You'll see mainly entry level Motorola and Samsung offerings ranging from 40 to 200.

There's also just an absolutely bonkers number of functional second hand devices out there. A lot of them make their way to Africa as phones people use (and the Chinese repair and refurbishmenr business is huge and a volume business).

There are charities which will also give away phones because for a homeless person a usable phone is quite valuable because it makes it possible to do things like apply for jobs, find services etc. (even if you're just surfing cafe wifi).

In SF, I commonly see homeless people with cell phones

That may say more about needs than affordability.

It's clearly affordable if it can be afforded. Otherwise nothing is affordable.

What I mean is that there are different needs and constraints on different users. Some homeless folks need a smartphone more than, say, retirees.

It also affects what would normally be considered "inferior goods" in economics. If someone is camp-in-the-bushes homeless, they can't really "save money" by having an old laptop instead. Being able to carry it with you is more of a requirement than a convenience.

California provides free phones and phone service to those who qualify through the California Lifeline program

I am using an 8 year old phone that was mid when I bought it for ~$300 or so new. It's only in the last year that I've begun to find it annoyingly slow. Now I prefer using an actual computer for most things and only rely on the phone for messaging and maps when I'm out and about (plus some lightweight web browsing) but my point is that mediocre actually works fine. I have hardly any apps on it, if there isn't a web interface I don't need to interact with it.

Switzerland is doing that quite a while now.

https://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/landline-subscription...

>I've never heard of such a plan anywhere.

In 2011 Poland 2600MHz LTE band was auctioned off with the condition winning bidderwould offer free 512Kbit mobile internet called 'Bezpłatny Dostęp do Internetu' aka BDI (translates free access to internet) for 3 years, amount of time it should take them to build full country coverage.

... except they failed to build the network deciding to concentrate on most profitable cities instead. National regulating body UKE (Office of Electronic Communications) didnt like that one bit and first expanded free period to 2016, and then in 2016 made extension indefinite until mandated 50% coverage is reached + 3 years. This happened in 2021 forcing them to provide it all the way to 2024.

TLDR 2011-2024 free government mandated mobile 512Kbit internet.

Funnily enough Aero2 - company in question decided it was a good business after all and is still offering "free unlimited" trier, in quotes because you have to renew it every 12 months paying ~$1.5 https://aero2.pl/zasady-dzialania/

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