We've had this discussion before. This is merely rebranding and we all know what internet.org is really about. And can we please stop being shocked by any of it? Facebook is a corporation, it is not a charity, it needs to make money since it promised its investors bucketloads of gold.
That being said, I feel that these discussions do little other than blame Facebook. What we need is a good alternative that _does_ provide a full internet connection albeit at low speeds to people in developing regions of the world and the only way that I see we can possibly achieve this is to have good legislation. I remember having just a dial up modem, and that was enough for me to move up the social ladder; information can bring about social mobility.
Right now, the _value_ of the internet is evident to most people in government, all that we need to do is catalyze the process of making internet a fundamental right in most developing countries, or at least making internet _available_ and _affordable_ to everyone even if that means giving tax cuts to people.
First of all, mobile Internet user base in India is already growing at 4% every month!
And then, there _are_ alternatives. Aircel has launched free data at 64kbps. Airtel has announced cashback scheme for data usage. Mozilla will be launching an ad-subsidized data access plan. All of these are network neutral.
That being said, I feel that these discussions do little other than blame Facebook. What we need is a good alternative that _does_ provide a full internet connection albeit at low speeds to people in developing regions of the world and the only way that I see we can possibly achieve this is to have good legislation. I remember having just a dial up modem, and that was enough for me to move up the social ladder; information can bring about social mobility.
Right now, the _value_ of the internet is evident to most people in government, all that we need to do is catalyze the process of making internet a fundamental right in most developing countries, or at least making internet _available_ and _affordable_ to everyone even if that means giving tax cuts to people.