> The idea behind Free Basics is to offer a stripped-down version of the mobile web so people can access parts of the Internet without it counting against their data plans.
I hate it when people lie like this. The "Free Basics" would force all websites accessible on this scheme to go through FaceBook, including encrypted ones, so FaceBook can then log and analyze your data. This is not some generous scheme which just gives you free access to the Internet; it gives you free access to FaceBook, which then in turn gives you what it thinks is right.
The governments running the libraries don't keep records to show you ads. They do so because its essential that knowledge is freely accessible. I think providing free internet has a case but not at the cost of network providers profiling its users.
What's the incentive for business to provide free access without monetizing the data somehow? None. I think its up to the government to take up such an effort, and realise the potential that's out there.
The article gets it spot-on. This isn't a problem for a tech-company with vested interests to solve. Its the government's problem, a political problem. Free internet (or free HTTP), like free education must be made a thing. Esp, in countries that struggle with poor-literacy rates.
Internet access (and not just HTTP) in Finland (?) is free. Indian government already owns a country-wide mobile-network. It should and could def provide such a service. But again, shouldn't be at the cost of profiling its users and gathering data.
> Internet access (and not just HTTP) in Finland (?) is free.
Internet access in Finland is not free. However, everybody in Finland is entitled to Internet service, i.e. each area has a designated universal service provider who is responsible for providing a minimum of 1 Mbps service to everyone in the area.
So, if you want Internet service in Finland, you can always get it. It does not mean it's free, just that it's always available.
Prices for wired service are reasonable, between 30 and 50 euros (average prices for 1M and 100M respectively). Wireless service is cheap and coverage is very good with close to universal coverage. 50M uncapped and unlimited LTE is 15 to 20 euros per month. Prepaid LTE is 20 euros for 10G or 20 euros for unlimited and uncapped service at a low speed for six months.
That's ridiculously good. I'm paying $120AUD/month for 100 megabit down / 40 up. It's far better than the 8/1 I had before but I can exceed the monthly traffic quota in 45 minutes or less!
What's the speed like going out of the country? Where are the big peering points?
The main local IX is FICIX. The main Swedish IX Netnod in Stockholm is 8 ms away. Netnod is the 10th largest IX in the world. A new direct subsea cable to Germany just got built and it will bring DE-CIX, the largest IX In the world closer.
Russia is also close. Google and Yandex both built datacenters in Finland to serve Russia and Northern Europe. Facebook put theirs in Sweden for the same reason.
There's been a lot written on peering. Dr. Peering has a lot on his website, perhaps not so much regarding latency but lots and lots on peering in general. Googling for publications will also get you a lot of interesting stuff.
That's because Finland's low-density areas are cold whereas Australia's are hot, and hot bits are vastly more expensive to transmit. It can't possibly be that one country's SPs were more effective at buying politicians. Because lobbying (i.e. legal cover for bribery) would never cause that to happen.
I almost choked on my coffee before I understood this was written in jest :) Well done!
More seriously one historic contributing factor was probably that Finland had small, local monopolies that provided services locally and each had both local owners and local pride. There wasn't just one large state monopoly as in most other countries. Later competition blossomed quite well once the monopolies were removed.
Depends on the provider. 100/10M is a common product, but some offer 100/100M.
EDIT:
Half of the dwellings have cable where you can get 350/20M for 45 euros per month.
Fiber/FTTB is all over the map, but typical max speed from a large telco is 1000/100M for 52,50 euros per month.
The incentive is to increase usage generally, with some other users paying. And to show people some small level of service, hoping they will upgrade.
Receiving phone calls is free, and the first phone I had (in 1999/2000 or so) was only used for my mum to call me, not the other way round. But that was still income for the phone company.
Around here you could even get plans where the company paid you for your incoming calls. One of those plans was so good that people sold their SIM cards years after the plan had been discontinued for new users (mobile companies are not allowed to cancel plans for existing users without their consent).
While this is a good goal, it's pretty clear this isn't the way to achieve it. It appears that the author hasn't thought it through - if the Facebook approach was rejected, why should exactly the same thing (as far as I can see) be accepted from another company.
It seems to me that the experience with rapid mobile take-up in Africa indicates that market-based solutions can work, but the key is high levels of competition. My understanding is that in most of Africa the landline phone companies were government owned monopolies and under serviced rural areas which forced the private sector to act.
The FB approach: we will pay for some small amount of data that anyone can use, but we will determine what you can reach. We will make money by getting fees from the content providers we allow into this walled garden.
The Steve Song approach: some of the profits of wireless providers will be mandated to go to a very low speed service that anyone can use for any purpose. The wireless providers may or may not make the money back from increased utilization by new and existing fee-paying subscribers who see increased value in the network. If it doesn't make money, it's not a problem: the social benefits outweigh the very small cost.
If it's free, you're often the product being sold.
This is a statement the haves know, and presumably the free internet crowd is not fully aware of, or have a choice to opt in/out of.
There have been free dial-up internet providers like 3web, who historically tried to fill this niche but were more upfront about it and tried to make it run.
A lot of people here are saying that asking for a plan like this is like asking for the proverbial free lunch. Cellphone companies operate over a public good. Regulatory requisites for spectrum allocation, as something like this could become, should not be thought of as a free lunch. A free lunch (for operators) is to manage the spectrum in a way that does not maximize public interest.
If it's the cellphone companies then in the end the payers will be the taxpayers (through subsidies or lower spectrum license fee receipts as the cellphone companies factor in the costs of the free service obligation when bidding) and/or the customers, as costs are passed on to them.
I would love to see the numbers on this. It's not clear the plan would incur costs for operators unless there is no room left to optimize their use of the allocated spectrum. The article also lays out the argument for a value increase in the whole network (granted not limited to each operator) that could offset any costs. Even with inescapable costs that would be factored into the spectrum bids, why would it no be preferable for that value to be transferred directly to the public, in the form of free internet access, than to have it flow into governments for indirect redistribution?
9.6 kbps is about 3GB per month. That's between $44 (Finland) and $360 (US) in retail prices per year. It adds up to a lot, approximately $880 million to $7.2 billion per million users over a 20 year license. How many millions of subscribers did you want to subsidize?
> It's not clear the plan would incur costs for operators unless there is no room left to optimize their use of the allocated spectrum.
You cannot just consider the marginal costs. You have to take into consideration the fully loaded costs including operating and upgrading the network when you run out of capacity.
> The article also lays out the argument for a value increase in the whole network (granted not limited to each operator) that could offset any costs.
The cellphone companies don't care about imaginary money that does not flow to the bottom line.
> Even with inescapable costs that would be factored into the spectrum bids, why would it no be preferable for that value to be transferred directly to the public, in the form of free internet access, than to have it flow into governments for indirect redistribution?
The answer to this depends on whatever political views you subscribe to.
"The idea behind Free Basics is to offer a stripped-down version of the mobile web so people can access parts of the Internet without it counting against their data plans. But those who oppose the plan argue that it gives Facebook an unfair advantage, and violates the tenets of the open web."
Having nothing at all is better than having a limited selection. Welcome to "net neutrality".
I was under the impression that the issue was on the infrastructure side not with the devices themselves. If that's the case, I'm not sure how this replaces the drones that Facebook was planning to use and deliver internet.
Just as web pages are adapted according to browser capabilities and existing mobile/desktop standards, sites can be adapted to very low bandwidth users. Not all of them, but many.
There's no point in Google Maps trying to send a VLB continuously updated set of map tiles, but an interface for the travel directions system can fit in a 4KB page - about 4 seconds of 9600bps usage. Get the weather, read the news, read and write blogs stripped of JavaScript and images, send and receive enough email to run your errands -- all these things are very high value for people who don't otherwise have connectivity, and very cheap to provide for them.
The hotspots themselves won't do you much good. You'll need backhaul to connect them to the Internet and pay somebody to service and operate them. Then you'll need power for each and every device.
I hate it when people lie like this. The "Free Basics" would force all websites accessible on this scheme to go through FaceBook, including encrypted ones, so FaceBook can then log and analyze your data. This is not some generous scheme which just gives you free access to the Internet; it gives you free access to FaceBook, which then in turn gives you what it thinks is right.