Free basics is a walled garden: Here’s a much better scheme — Direct Benefit Transfer for internet data packs

Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah

Whenever Sanjay Sahni, a school dropout working as an electrician in New Delhi, returned to his village, Ratnauli in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, he would hear complaints that his fellow villagers had not received their Nrega wages or job cards. One day in Delhi, he got his hands on a computer and simply typed: “Nrega Bihar”. Among the many links he found was a list of job cards for his village that turned out to be riddled with discrepancies. Armed with 3,000 pages of data, he empowered the villagers of Ratnauli to fight for their rights.

Sahni’s crusade was only made possible because he had access to an open internet. Sanjay could enter data into any search engine, visit any website and find the relevant information. What if Sanjay’s first foray into the online world was not on the open internet, but through Facebook’s Free Basics platform? Would the same, freely published government information be available on Free Basics?

The internet is a powerful poverty alleviation tool, offering unbounded opportunities limited only by imagination, whether it is a farmer looking for information on monsoon preparedness, artisans connecting with buyers in a marketplace or a college student from rural India enrolling for an online course. Against this backdrop, we have Free Basics, a Facebook-run programme where partnering telcos offer free access to specific websites. Free Basics’ defendants are puzzled by the opposition to the programme. We think Sanjay Sahni’s story makes the reasons for opposition obvious.

We have witnessed Facebook’s massive multimedia campaign over the last few days – double spreads in newspapers, ad campaigns on television and heavy promotion on Facebook itself. While similar earlier attempts from telecom operators were stalled by the volunteer-run SaveTheInternet campaign, Facebook has mounted a multi-million dollar campaign powered by marketing muscle and its own platform to generate support for Free Basics without explaining all the facts.

The walled garden of Free Basics goes against the spirit of openness on the internet, and in the guise of being pro-poor, balkanises it. Only Free Basics-approved websites will be accessible for free. In theory, anyone meeting the technical guidelines today can participate. However, services that may potentially compete with telco offerings may not join Free Basics. Since Facebook does not currently subsidise free usage, telcos will have to foot the bill by raising prices.

The future is uncertain – the rules governing participation may change arbitrarily, there may be Facebook ads on the platform, or businesses may need to pay to be included. How can innovation flourish in such a claustrophobic space? In the next few years, government services at the central, state and local levels will go online. Must every government agency then submit its website to Facebook? With Free Basics, Digital India is as good as dead on arrival.

We propose a different solution – one that respects net neutrality, aligns incentives, can be rolled out swiftly, and which allows Facebook to also participate. We propose that the government take the approach of a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for internet data packs. This idea is based on the success of LPG DBT or Pahal, where over 100 million families receive LPG subsidy in their bank accounts.

Suppose the government announces a Data Pack DBT scheme that offers 120MB annually to every subscriber with the first 10MB free every month. A scan of various existing data packs suggests that 1MB data over 3G conservatively costs 25 paisa. At government’s scale, this could be much lower.

Even with all existing 400 million data users plus 400 million new data users being offered a free Data Pack DBT, the cost to the government would be 30/user x 800 million users = 2,400 crore a year. People may buy multiple SIMs for free data, but this problem is easily solved by linking mobile numbers to Aadhaar numbers (now held by 950 million people) so that one person can get access to only one Data Pack DBT.

This may sound like a lot of money, but we as a country can afford this cost to bring everyone online. The Department of Telecom’s Universal Service Obligation Fund today has a corpus of 40,000 crore with contributions from all telecom operators over time. Facebook can simply contribute to the same fund and achieve its own stated goal of bringing all of India online without distorting markets. With our design, government can roll out Data Pack DBT nationwide within 3 months.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India reports 400 million internet users in India. All these users came online not through Free Basics, but because of the inherent value the internet has to offer. With the diversity of India, it is easy to imagine thousands or perhaps even millions of entrepreneurial experiments playing out over the next few years over the internet. Consider innovations like the India Stack which combines Aadhaar authentication, e-KYC, esign, Digital Locker and UPI interoperable mobile payments to provide cashless, paperless and presence-less transactions. All these innovations will be stifled if we as a society take the wrong road at this important juncture.

Our government must immediately announce and enact laws protecting net neutrality and preserving our right to freely access the full internet. Anything less, and India runs the risk of serving someone else’s interests instead of our own, becoming a digital colony of the internet giants.

Nandan Nilekani was chairman of UIDAI and Viral Shah led the design of government’s subsidy platforms using Aadhaar

Government could start a Data Pack DBT scheme that offers 120MB data annually to every subscriber with first 10MB free every month … funded through Universal Service Obligation Fund, to which Facebook can contribute too.

Facebook's Zuckerberg muses on Net neutrality, defends Internet.org

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, answering questions from Facebook users.Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg continues to support Net neutrality.

That was one of the key messages that came from a question and answer session the Facebook cofounder and CEO held on his company's website Tuesday. Zuckerberg said the principle of Net Neutrality, which requires that all Internet traffic be treated equally no matter where it's headed or where it comes from, makes sure Internet service providers like Verizon and AT&T don't "discriminate and limit access to services people want to use."

The topic has been the subject of heated debate and lawsuits since the Federal Communications Commission in February effectively adopted those rules in the US. Internet service providers and telecommunications industry groups have fought the new rules, arguing the FCC is being heavy-handed, that it's relying on outdated laws and its actions could stifle innovation.

"The FCC went far beyond the public's call for sound Net neutrality rules," Michael Powell, the head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and a former chairman of the FCC, said in a statement Monday. "Instead, it took the opportunity to engineer for itself a central role in regulating and directing the evolution of the Internet."

Zuckerberg said that in countries where many people are not connected to the Internet, "having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than having no ability to connect and share at all." That, he said, is why he's pressed initiatives like Internet.org, which he believes can co-exist with Net neutrality regulations.

The Q&A session, which was held on Zuckerberg's Facebook profile page, is just the latest public appearance by the social-networking site's billionaire cofounder, who devotes time about once a month for public appearances. To that end, he has held public question-and-answer sessions in the US, Colombia and Spain since November.

Though he typically repeats many of his opinions about freedom of speech, the importance of Internet access for the poor and some of his other favorite political issues, he has also given some insight into the way he works and what he sometimes thinks about.

Last year, he expanded on earlier comments he'd made about the Hollywood portrayal of Facebook's founding in Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Network." In the past, he'd said the one thing the movie got right was his clothing, a joke undercutting the film's veracity. But talking in a live broadcast in November, he said the movie had been "hurtful." He also said he likes fried chicken on his pizza.

As to the way Facebook works, he's often defended following strict public speech laws in various countries by saying it's better than the alternative, being blocked. He's also discussed protecting freedoms of expression, despite terrorism and other issues.

One user asked whether Facebook hinders face-to-face communication. Zuckerberg argued it did not. "Tools like Facebook help people communicate mostly with people who aren't directly around them," he wrote.Within minutes of announcing his question-and-answer session, Zuckerberg's profile was inundated with hundreds of questions and comments, ranging from germane, such as how to keep a friend's list relevant, to the ridiculous, "If you could be any biscuit, what biscuit would you be?" (He didn't answer.)

Singer and entertainer Shakira, of whose music Zuckerberg has said he enjoys, asked how technology can be used as an educational tool for disadvantaged communities. "I'm very excited about personalized learning -- giving everyone the ability to use technology to learn what they're most interested in and at their own pace,"he wrote. He added that he's supporting one school experimenting with this technology through his personal philanthropy.

Another user asked about Zuckerberg's vision for Oculus VR, a virtual reality goggles maker Facebook bought last year for $2 billion. Zuckerberg responded, "Our mission is to give people the power to experience anything." Oculus, he said, serves as a potentially powerful communication tool, which will allow people to interact with people and experience things that can't in the real world.

He also said photos and videos will likely change as a result of virtual reality technology. "Just like we capture photos and videos today and then share them on the Internet to let others experience them too, we'll be able to capture whole 3D scenes and create new environments and then share those with people as well," he said. "It will be pretty wild."

Zuckerberg also often fields requests for new features in these talks, and this was no exception. One user asked him to add a sarcasm button, much like the "Like" button Facebook is well known for. "Sure, we'll get right on that," Zuckerberg wrote, adding a smiley-face icon.

Net neutrality: Simplest explanation

EDITED BY ADITYA KUMAR SAROJ

ORIGINAL BY Nikhil Pahwa & Vikas SN

Here's how we can describe net neutrality. 

Telecom operators/ISPs are access services providers, and can control either how much you access, what you access, how fast you access and how much you pay to access content and services on the Internet.

It’s important for access to knowledge, services and free speech, as well as freedom and ease of doing business online, for this access to be neutral:

– All sites must be equally accessible- The same access speed at the telco/ISP level for each (independent of telco selection)
– The same data cost for access to each site (per KB/MB).

This means, Net Neutrality is about:
– No telecom-style licensing of Internet companies (see this and this)
– No gateways (Internet.org, Airtel OneTouch Internet, Data VAS), censorshipor selection;
– No speeding up of specific websites (that may or may not pay telcos)
– No “zero rating” or making some sites free over others (and that goes for you too, Wikipedia and twitter).

Recently, Barack Obama himself stood up for net neutrality. Now, it's India's turn to stand up for net neutrality and protest against programs like Airtel Zero. Use the #NetNeutrality, like many others, to make the internet equal for all.