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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

If it's a choice between Wikipedia and Facebook, or nothing at all, telling poor Indians they should only be allowed to have the latter seems quite cruel.

Yes, it's unfortunate they can't be given the whole Internet, but the fact they can get anything at all should be celebrated.

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As an Indian, believe me when I say this: "We already have good internet". Our data rates are extremely cheap. I paid less than 1 INR per day (it costs more to get a cup of coffee, which costs around 5-10 bucks) while using Opera Mini on a Nokia dumbphone.

India has progressed beyond the point where rich corporations need to help our country. We have amongst the world's largest telecom industry and usage statistics. Everyone owns a cellphone, and more and more people are realizing the benefits of a smartphone (Whatsapp primarily, which is way cheaper than SMS).

A basic android smartphone costs 100 USD in India. If a person can purchase a smartphone that costly to "access the internet", they are rich enough to afford a data plan (which costs around 3 USD/month).

No, we should not be celebrating this.

(I hope this did not come across as a rant, slightly furious now).

>As an Indian, believe me when I say this: "We already have good internet". Our data rates are extremely cheap. I paid less than 1 INR per day (it costs more to get a cup of coffee, which costs around 5-10 bucks) while using Opera Mini on a Nokia dumbphone.

I don't know which part of the country you live in but most of rural India can't even pay Rs. 1 per day for the internet. Also they can't even afford smartphones.

And how will they access internet.org without a smartphone?

I personally wouldn't care, and I think a lot of others would agree, that if they'd just called it something other than "Internet.org" - FacebookNet, FBnet, FaceLAN, Kwangmyong, whatever other name that does not suggest this is actually the real Internet; there wouldn't be so much opposition.

Instead they chose to acquire the internet.org domain (wouldn't the IETF be a better owner of that name?) and are calling it "Internet"; it's like a bait-and-switch. Maybe there should be regulations on what the phrase "Internet access" can be used to advertise, or the word "Internet" itself?

Saying that the choice is between partial access or nothing at all implies there can be no other option. Also something is not necessarily better than nothing; especially when that "something" influences societal norms or establishes powerful relationships.

Let's say everyone in a small country has to travel 10 miles every day for work. They can walk the 10 miles or sign up for a free car. You might say it would be cruel to deny people the option of a free car, especially if they see nothing wrong with the terms and conditions. But what if the cars can only tune to radio stations that peddle the same message? So what, it's free, right? Well, what if there are no seat belts, air bags, or turn signals? At some point it's conceivable what began as an obviously good deal can actually bring a lot of harm. Given that this particular deal requires no SSL, I don't think this car analogy is that far off.

Nope. We train them that way the internet is scarce, closed and walled.

A DSL line and a wifi router could cover a whole village and give the real deal.

We train them that way the internet is scarce, closed and walled.

The Internet used to be scarce, closed and walled in the US and Europe. People adjust to the new conditions as they develop.

A DSL line and a wifi router could cover a whole village and give the real deal.

You write "a DSL line" as if India wasn't a 3M km² country and with huge areas without even central electricity supply. What would be the cost of installing "a DSL line" for the 600k+ villages in India?

2g Internet in India already has high penetration, with most urban areas (any place with >10000 population) having 3g access.

I am not sure about DSL lines, but BSNL (Indian public telecom operator) has faced this exact issue 10 years back when telephones (landlines) were becoming commonplace in India. We got a personal phone somewhere in '98 I believe. It only took a few more years before the telephone lines had reached Dangoli (which is my remote native village).

Today, the very same village boasts of multiple telecom operators (cellular). We have done this in the past, and we are doing exceedingly well even today.

I wasn't criticizing India's development, just the plan of installing a DSL line for each village.

No doubt, yet there's a reason why your country has less than 28M landline subscribers, while it has 930M+ cellphones. Passing cable is expensive and inflexible (e.g. harder to upgrade). Mobile Internet access is a much more sensible solution for the current situation, in my opinion.

Yes. Cellular is a much more better solution.

> What would be the cost of installing "a DSL line" for the 600k+ villages in India?

Worthy

> without central electricity supply.

If you have electricity for a base station and charging phones, you also have for pbx and copper wire.

Worthy

Care to say why?

If you have electricity for a base station and charging phones, you also have for pbx and copper wire.

I pointed that out not because there wouldn't be electricity to run the DSL system, but to show how difficult it has been to run electricity supply cables. DSL would have the same problems. And it would be obsolete the day it got installed.

I just don't see ADSL being anything than a more expensive and less flexible alternative to mobile Internet for their current situation.

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