[governance] [bestbits] The unintended consequences of Free Basics campaign in India

[Judy Okite]

"I am convinced that Facebook and their ad agencies completely
underestimated the Indian public." Picture shows protests in Hyderabad
against Facebook’s campaign. Photo: Mohammed Yousuf


http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/trai-bats-for-net-neutrality-internet-power-to-the-people/article8214991.ece

CONGRATULATIONS  to the Indian public!!



*'Chance Favors the prepared mind'* - Louis Pasteur

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:23 AM, Mwendwa Kivuva <
Kivuva at transworldafrica.com> wrote:

> On 15/01/2016, Deirdre Williams <williams.deirdre at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Mwendwa,
> > Perhaps I'm using an inaccurate definition for the "next billion". It's
> > within that context that I've been thinking about "free basics". If it is
> > necessary to "connect the next billion" then it seems to me that they
> must
> > be currently un-connected.
> > I'm very interested to see the prices that you quote. Things are rather
> > different here.And I'm not sure that solar chargers have made it to Saint
> > Lucia, except possibly to the well off.
>
> Here are the GPRS phones for $10
> http://www.orange.co.ke/en/product/kaduda/
> The Solar chargers which are very popular with the rural community are
> here http://www.kebuysell.com/Sale/Solar+Lamp+With+Phone+Chargers/s3va12
>
> > You don't answer my point about ISP subscription - but I expect this is
> > probably because you are thinking of people who already have and use an
> > appropriate type of phone, and therefore already pay a subscription
>
> I agree with you that Internet prices remain high in many developing
> countries and issues of access and cost should still be addressed.
> Mobile service providers have come up with very small Internet bundles
> of upto 7Mb for $0.05 but you can imagine what you can do with a data
> limit of 7MB. This is actually very expensive because if you scale it
> up, its like 140MB of data goes for $1
>
>
> > Finally we may need to be a little careful about statistics. Mobile phone
> > penetration in Saint Lucia is greater than 100% (I think this is true
> > generally across the Caribbean) but that DOES NOT mean that everyone has
> a
> > phone.
>
> It would be interesting to know the barriers people face to owning a phone.
>
> > It would be instructive to be able to do more comparison among different
> > parts of the world - thank you for sharing your perspective with me.
>
> Yes the statistics don't necessarily mean one to one ownership of a
> phone but a ratio of phone ownership with the population.
>
>
> >
>
>
> --
> ______________________
> Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
> twitter.com/lordmwesh
>
>
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