actually the problem comes from the profit seeking companies. The original intention was provide help to the poor people who can't afford it. I remember wikipedia and some other non profit companies were initially interested in providing this for free. As far as I know aircel still provides it for free. It not just in India though many countries like Russia Indonesia also offer something. The situation changes when you have profit seeking companies trying utilise the situation. Cleartrip response exposes this perfectly.

The precedent already exists, at least here in Australia. Luckily it hasn't caused too many problems thus far, but whether that is merely an outlier remains to be seen.

To clarify for the global audience: (most) broadband in Australia is metered, so back when ADSL started getting big, ISP's would offset 14GB bandwidth cap with 'free zone' content - data which is unmetered. This still continues today, the most recent competitive offering is unmetered Netflix - http://www.optus.com.au/netflix

Which, the latest news is that Netflix regrets signing these deals in the first place http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/netflix-regrets-signing-un...

Wow, there are actual countries with bandwidth cap and privileged content for Home Internet? Damn, I thought that was just the hypothetical scarecrow of NN defenders =/

eh. It's something that made sense over ten years ago. Very little content was hosted locally within Australia so most traffic had to go over the expensive links to other countries (which are obviously constrained in bandwidth). Privileged/unmetered content was often things like local Steam mirrors or whatnot which was closer to the user/ISP.

Now that more and more content is cached locally, there's less and less of a need for it both bandwidth caps and privileged content.

But then why didn't they give you a shitty bandwidth when you try to access such remote content? That would be fair game, instead of capping the global data transferred over a month..

Aren't video games really expensive there for no reason?

Video Games, Songs on iTunes, Internet, Phone Services... The list goes on, pretty much everything is expensive over here, even digital products with zero shipping or handling costs are triple or more the price in the US. For example I pay $70/month for 200GB of 'broadband' that peaks at 500kb/s and is totally incapable of streaming video. My mobile phone costs $95/month and I get 5GB of data.

There is a bigger picture you're not aware of that is in play here.

Zuckerberg is providing free internet to millions.

Except providing free access to Facebook is not "free internet." It is just free Facebook (and whatever related services). It is not truly "the internet" if it is restricted to Facebook (and associated services).

Better no internet than facebook? Sounds cynic.

Better just internet.

It's like McDonald's building "free" roads that you can use to reach McDonald's, but if you want to go anywhere else you have to pay tolls. It is unbelievably self-serving and for Zuckerburg to dissemble on that point is wildly disingenuous.

"Well, at least they can reach McDonald's" is not a good argument against just building roads and letting people drive wherever.

I like this analogy with roads because land like wireless spectrum is a very finite resource especially at the last mile.

Personally, I wish there was a better scheme to allocate precious wireless spectrum other than giving a 100 year license to the highest bidder in an auction. (Whether the auction is rigged or not is besides the point.)

We talk about common carrier when it comes to wireline communication but why can't we do the same for wireless?

I don't know about others but it sickens me to think that we consider it an achievement to raise a couple of billion dollars for granting exclusive license to prime low frequency spectrum to Cingular/Verizon. Wouldn't it be better if wireless carriers didn't have to fight over who has the least bad coverage? There has to be a better way...

To me it sounds like McDonalds sending out a free shuttle bus to pick you up, but the shuttle only takes you to McDonalds (and not Wendy's or whatever). This actually exists with things like free hotel airport shuttles.

But you're assured you've just seen the entire city and you're done and can go back now.

well, there is also an alternative road where you always pay toll, no matter where you wanna go, so most people from the village have never gone out.

Also, to be in good books McDonalds is giving access to school and hospital also for free.

There are ways to provide free internet to millions, while NOT compromising on neutrality or providing convenient network leverage to Facebook and Reliance to pick winners.

How is X megabytes / month for free but with ads (this is network neutral) not better than Internet.org's current model? Why not let those millions decide which are the essential internet services for them? Do the poor millions don't deserve choice?

Let the user chose for himself. How hard can this be?

> with ads

Why ads? Facebook would be providing internet.org for free, right? If the goal is getting more people on the internet, then internet.org could provide unfettered access to the internet and still reach their goal. However, if the aim is to get more people on their platform and increase Facebook's bottom line, then the goal is about manipulating one of the most disenfranchised people.

A way out for the zero rated schemes and internet.org is to sponsor bandwidth for the end user. The telecom service providers could offer 100mb per month free to the end users and bill internet.org et al for the service.

If you provide free capped connections to the end-users (with selected services not counting toward the cap), that would be a totally different discussion indeed.

But that's not the case here.

This is not about choice. (.. or we would appreciate the option to browse facebook for free.)

It's about net neutrality. Unconnected people in India shouldn't destroy the bad impression we associated with this policy in the first place.

No, what he's doing is providing free Facebook so that his user base increases, so he has more people's privacy to exploit, mine for data, and then sell to the highest bidder.