Facebook Is Talking To the White House About Giving You 'Free' Internet (washingtonpost.com)

Facebook is in talks with the government and wireless carriers to bring its 'Free Basics' internet service to the United States, reports Washington Post, citing sources. If everything goes as planned for Facebook, it would target "low-income and rural Americans who cannot afford reliable, high-speed internet at home or on smartphones," (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source) the paper adds. From the report: Exactly what specific services would be offered in the U.S. app has not been determined. But the idea to bring Free Basics to the United States is likely to rekindle a long-running debate about the future of the Internet. On one side are those who view services such as Facebook's as a critical tool in connecting underserved populations to the Internet, in some cases for the first time. On the other side are those who argue that exempting services from data caps creates a multitiered playing field that favors businesses with the expertise and budgets to participate in such programs. The fight over this tactic, known as "zero-rating," has largely taken place overseas where local start-ups are mixing with globally established firms in still-nascent Internet economies. But a launch of Free Basics would bring the discussion to U.S. shores in a major way.India banned Free Basics program in the country earlier this year, stating that Facebook's initiative violates net neutrality. The government told Facebook to open Free Basics so that underserved Indians could access any website that would like -- as opposed to select websites handpicked by Facebook. The government added that if it is not feasible for Facebook to offer unlimited access to every website, it could look into introducing limited monthly data plans (like 500MB or 1GB for users). India was not open to the idea of Facebook offering users access to select websites.

Comments

Sounds more like 'Facebooknet' than 'Internet'

[Rick Schumann]

Memo to Zuckerberg: If you want to give poor people 'free internet', then give them free internet, not the 2016 version of AOL. I agree with India on this: This idea violates the concept of net neutrality. You either give people complete access, or give them no access, you should not get to decide what they do and do not have access to.

I might not be opposed to this if done right.

[Wycliffe]

If free basics was 64kbps to access anything on the web (basically what tmobile, etc.. do when you run out of data) then I might be ok with it.
If free basics was html only and no video/multimedia then this again might be ok.
I'm completely against zero rating but if you did it this way then you are basically giving a low bandwidth "text only" version of the web away for free.
It makes no sense the other way where facebook is exempt but linkedin isn't because it didn't pay the right person.
Now if facebook wants to pay my my cellular provider for my bandwidth usage (and pay the same consumer rate I do) then I would be ok with that too.
It would have to be closely watched though so that you don't end up with a tiered web where the only sites most people visit are the ones that are "free".

Re:I might not be opposed to this if done right.

[Daetrin]

I agree with your cautionary side! Just within the last week or two we've had stories about new or upcoming Facebook services that will be competing directly with ebay, Craigslist, Slack, LinkedIn, and probably others. And i'm sure they've got other services planned that haven't been well publicized yet.

If Facebook gets it set up so everyone has free access to all their cloned services while having to pay for the originals that's going to give them a huge advantage and could easily lead to a monopoly situation.

Giving Facebook an economically reinforced status as the gateway to the internet seems like a bad idea to me.