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Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

economist.com

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Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#111

Post by arsenide »

devindotcom wrote: post #15

Personally, I believe Zuckerberg is sincere in wanting to connect everyone in the world with each other. However, I believe he is also sincere in thinking that Facebook is the best and perhaps only platform by which this is possible. In this he is sincerely mistaken. I feel sure he doesn't think of it as a land grab, even privately. But he is looking from the inside out. If he wants to be seen as the Great Connector,…

Thank you for expressing this in a coherent way. I think there are a good number of people in positions of power truly trying to do things for the common good but instead individuals on the outside look at it and think these people are doing them for only corporate gain.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#112

Post by gauravagarwalr »

avar wrote: post #30
devindotcom wrote: post #15

Personally, I believe Zuckerberg is sincere in wanting to connect everyone in the world with each other. However, I believe he is also sincere in thinking that Facebook is the best and perhaps only platform by which this is possible. In this he is sincerely mistaken. I feel sure he doesn't think of it as a land grab, even privately. But he is looking from the inside out. If he wants to be seen as the Great Connector,…

Oh come on, this is a guy who poorly disguises a press release about a restructuring of his finances as a letter to his daughter. It's much more likely that Zuckerberg realizes his company is overvalued, and that he needs to acquire a massive amount of users to make up for that gap. Subsidizing a walled-garden version of the Internet where users can only use Facebook in developing countries makes strategic sense for…

What I miss from the first line of your response is a source.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#113

Post by awqrre »

habosa wrote: post #85
awqrre wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Facebook is trying to do is completely different... you were always able to use non-microsoft products/programs on Windows or browse non-microsoft websites... what Facebook is trying to do is much worst (probably evil).

You could also view it as not too different. Windows wanted to be the platform under everything. Now Facebook wants to be the platform under everything, and content/apps will have to go through Facebook (look at the direct publishing stuff they're already doing).

You don't have to go through Microsoft to publish Windows apps... not sure if it changed with Windows 10 though... but of course they are trying to change that to be like Android and iOS and get complete control.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#114

Post by jotux »

click170 wrote: post #43
chongli wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does it really matter, though? I'm sure Kim Jong-Un thinks he's making his country a better place, as thought Hitler. Perhaps we should focus more on judging the outcomes of people's actions instead of their intent.

I completely agree, results matter. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the old saying goes.

This reminds me of the saying, "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior."

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#115

Post by themartorana »

icebraining wrote: post #37
amelius wrote: post #12

Data infrastructure should be controlled by the government only. Why? Well, imagine that every transport company had to support their own road network... Alternatively, imagine that one company controlled the roads, creating effectively a controlled market nested inside a free market.

Except fiber cables are not at all like roads, in that you can run dozens side by side in less space than a single water pipe. And for the same reason, the companies vs government dichotomy is invalid here as well. Even if we want to provide a public service to avoid private monopolization, there's absolutely no reason to forbid private companies from competing with it. After all, if the problem is that private compa…

Yeah, but you have to dig up roads to put new fiber down.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#116

Post by avar »

gauravagarwalr wrote: post #112
avar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, this is a guy who poorly disguises a press release about a restructuring of his finances as a letter to his daughter. It's much more likely that Zuckerberg realizes his company is overvalued, and that he needs to acquire a massive amount of users to make up for that gap. Subsidizing a walled-garden version of the Internet where users can only use Facebook in developing countries makes strategic sense for…

What I miss from the first line of your response is a source.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-letter-to-o...

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#117

Post by icebraining »

MawNicker wrote: post #77
zanny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still hugely expensive to have redundant infrastructure, and that has real economic consequence to a country who decides to have private companies lay their own independent wires than at least compelling price controlled renting of those lines. But there is the other side of the equation that matters too. If you have complete government control there is no more market pressure on innovation at all. Nobody would…

The market has already converged on essentially this reality. We have cable and fiber monopolies controlling the local networks. These used to be more open when DSL was the prevalent technology. This allowed a variety of ISPs to utilize that shared infrastructure. The telcos didn't care about the Internet before. Once there was apparently money to be made they changed their game. They developed faster connections on…

The logic would be funny if it wasn't sad. The government creates a monopoly (AT&T). That company uses that power and money accumulated through decades to extend its reach into the cable system (current "Comcast" is actually the merger of a medium provider with AT&T Broadband, which held dozens of millions of cable subscribers). Then that is used to show that a government monopoly is needed.

Maybe you could actually decide to try a free market before declaring it a failure?

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#118

Post by avar »

tylermauthe wrote: post #106
avar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, this is a guy who poorly disguises a press release about a restructuring of his finances as a letter to his daughter. It's much more likely that Zuckerberg realizes his company is overvalued, and that he needs to acquire a massive amount of users to make up for that gap. Subsidizing a walled-garden version of the Internet where users can only use Facebook in developing countries makes strategic sense for…

How is not necessarily a bad thing? In what way could it possibly be a good thing for anybody outside of Facebook?

There are some people who are using "free basics" now that wouldn't have any Internet access without it. Now, you could argue and I'd probably agree with you that it's bad in the long term, creates a distorted market etc.

But if a foreign company offers a net subsidy to access a part of the Internet shouldn't that drive down the price of Internet access for everyone? I.e. you could access "free basics" and also have a complimentary Internet subscription that could be offered at a lower price since your Facebook traffic would be subsidized.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#119

Post by labster »

asift wrote: post #74
zanny wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a poor Indian citizen supposed to make a judgment on if having a locked down Internet where they can only use Facebook is better than this Internet they might not have even heard of with millions of websites? They only see one side of this argument if any at all. From their perspective they do not know alternatives even exist .

It's not that they don't see other alternatives. This is true, but the reality is that other realistic alternatives don't even exist. Their realistic option set is: (a) free access to an incredibly valuable set of resources, or (b) nothing. I would take (a) over (b) any day. I would hope that broader alternatives would eventually come along (and history tells us it will), but the crowd that wants the Indian poor to h…

It sounds like Indians are being forced to choose between two sides of a false dichotomy. Aren't cellular data networks realistic?

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#120

Post by icebraining »

themartorana wrote: post #115
icebraining wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except fiber cables are not at all like roads, in that you can run dozens side by side in less space than a single water pipe. And for the same reason, the companies vs government dichotomy is invalid here as well. Even if we want to provide a public service to avoid private monopolization, there's absolutely no reason to forbid private companies from competing with it. After all, if the problem is that private compa…

Yeah, but you have to dig up roads to put new fiber down.

Nope, you just install plastic tubing which you can then use to run the fiber. The US federal government has already passed the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act to that end.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/new-bill-wants-fi...

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