I believe the basic human right is access to the unfettered internet. But we need to crawl before we can walk. People first need to see the value in having any internet at all. Once people are online a bit, they quickly want to see it all. The rampant use of VPNs in China is a good example.
Building out a cell network for the whole world isn't easy. It is much more feasible to partner with the existing providers who already reach the vast majority of the world's population. Although I agree it would be way better, I'm not sure how you'd convince them to make their entire service free.
I've been using the internet for 15 years, and I don't want to "see it all" and I never have. There's only about 15 websites I use regularly, and everything else I see comes through those. So you can't say, "we'll provide the big 15, you will learn to love the rest" when that could very well be a significant lie.
It's like saying "We'll build Wal-marts in every town, that way they'll learn to love shopping so much they'll start competing local businesses." It's transparently disingenuous, and completely unrealistic.
> People first need to see the value in having any internet at all.
Wow, this is horridly ignorant of the level of awareness in countries where Internet.org is trying to operate.
Let's take India.
People: homeless people, poor people, people in villages; all know what the Internet is. To some level. Not everyone uses it (esp. older people); not everyone is sure what it is -- but it's used in almost every social bubble by some people so people are aware of it and know its value. A lot of low-income families use Whatsapp, for example.
Internet.org isn't targeted towards the people who don't use the Internet at all. It's targeted towards the people who do use the Internet, but not much. Free stuff is nice, so more and more people will move on to the free Internet.org. There's no altruism here. It's a plain and simple business tactic.
> Building out a cell network for the whole world isn't easy.
Nobody's saying they should. But for the same amount of investment they could provide services like free Internet with a data cap. Make a landing page with a prominent link to Facebook or something. Meh.
> The rampant use of VPNs in China is a good example.
No it's not. That has nothing to do with this whatsoever. That's censorship.
> But we need to crawl before we can walk. Once people are online a bit, they quickly want to see it all.
At any point do you see Facebook committing to bringing the whole Internet to these people? I wouldn't really mind if it said that internet.org would be replaced with a full internet in 5 years or so.
Building out a cell network for the whole world isn't easy. It is much more feasible to partner with the existing providers who already reach the vast majority of the world's population. Although I agree it would be way better, I'm not sure how you'd convince them to make their entire service free.