The First Time We Connect: Why We Must #SaveFreeBasics
I remember vividly the day my family decided to ‘purchase’ the Internet. I had spent a rainy morning at a friend’s birthday party at a theme park. We were having a raucous and enjoyable session aboard rickety bumper boats, which nowadays regulators would doubtlessly have forbidden children from riding on.
Suddenly, a hard knock hit my head down onto the steering wheel. Whiplash. Smashed porcelain tooth enamel. Crumbly white porcelain on black plastic is permanently etched into my memory. Horror, recoil and disgust.
The theme park staff’s primary concern was that they were not legally liable to pay for my injuries. They didn’t bother to offer any serious medical attention. My friend’s parents didn’t give a shit either, taking me back to their house and leaving me alone to wait for my own family to pick me up.
In a pre-cell phone era, the not-giving-a-shit friend’s family couldn’t reach my family. They were out. Waiting for my folks to get home and hear their answer phone messages, shock gradually wore off as agonising pain kicked in.
Later, as the dentist began painstakingly reconstructing my front teeth, my parents very kindly offered to buy me something in return for my rather traumatic day. I told them I wanted the Internet.
My father decided to go with a well-regarded ISP called Voyager. When we eagerly inserted floppy disks Voyager sent over to ‘install the Internet’, we waited on a a loading screen that looked like an early 90’s computer game interstitial. A crudely pixelated epic rocket launch. Tragically, the loading screen repeatedly got stuck at 99%. A pain those familiar with computing of that era will understand.
I don’t remember when we first heard the dial up sound, but it changed my life.
The Internet taught me to code, play exciting games with my friends and allowed me to chat with girls after school.
It later enabled me to lead activist movements, move countries and gave me a career that has lasted nearly a decade.
I can imagine my life today without the Internet: it would be less rich in experience.
My story is not unique among those of us lucky enough to be born financially better-off, most likely in developed countries or large cities. Like any other new innovation, fatigue has set in on the revolutionary power of the Internet among existing users. For those of us who have benefitted so greatly from the Internet, we owe it to the world to make this technological privilege into a human right.
The importance of this mission comes into focus when we learn 90% of people in the world’s least developed countries do not have Internet access. While we debate manspreading & mansplaining on Twitter, hundreds of millions of women in the developing world are being left behind by a growing digital gender gap.
Beyond countless benefits of digital connectivity for us as individuals, there is a proven relationship between Internet access and economic growth. The Internet is also a critical tool for learning to read, health, educational & career opportunities.
Online connectivity provides a new universe for cultural exploration and expression. Minority languages — like Te Reo Maori in New Zealand and Latin globally — are using the Internet as a resuscitation tool to revive languages and cultures that were once derided as dying.
What can we as individuals do? Fortunately, even if you haven’t picked up a keyboard to start fighting against this global digital divide, others are already streets ahead. Humanity is coming up with more and more ingenious ways to enable connectivity.
You may have heard of Google’s Project Loon, which involves the (very loony) idea of distributing the Internet through giant balloons over vast distances. A wonderful and fantastic initiative that was recently tested in New Zealand and will have a selective roll-out in Indonesia next year — an initiative that we all should get behind.
Which brings us to today’s front-lines, the contours that shape the battle for a more accessible Internet. Facebook is extending a limited form of the Internet to the world called Free Basics as part of their Internet.org initiative. It kicks ass. They can explain the service better than me:
Free Basics makes the internet accessible to more people by providing them access to a range of free basic services like news, maternal health, travel, local jobs, sports, communication, and local government information.
To date, we’ve been able to offer these services to a billion people across Asia, Africa and Latin America. By introducing people to the benefits of the internet through these services, we hope to bring more people online and help improve their lives.
Fantastic, right? You can even submit your app to be part of the service right here.
Sadly, Free Basics is coming under attack in India. Despite the program already enabling more than one million people to connect to the Internet through telco Reliance for the first time in places like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, regulators have frozen the program based on supposed non-compliance with abstract and theoretical policies, notably ‘net neutrality’ (which I address further down). It is ridiculous, and is only a bad thing for the working class of India.
While some raise legitimate concerns about Free Basics rollout in India, most seem concerned with profit of Indian capitalists or a patronising paternalism toward the poor. One Bloomberg columnist argued in favour of Indian digital protectionism, favourably commenting on China’s limitations on foreign apps, and climaxing with an argument that the poor should wait for domestic capitalists to hook them up:
which venture capitalist will even entertain the idea of financing a newer, better mousetrap where existing mousetraps come with free cheese?
Yes, Free Basics — and similar services — are not perfect. They require cellular coverage and a device that can connect to a cellular network. Facebook probably will make money off the service eventually.
The greatest contention of Free Basics centres on ‘net neutrality’. I am personally in favour of the concept theoretically, but friend of mine Stallon Salvan swiftly and quickly demolished it’s relevance to Free Basics in a recent Facebook Post:
It’s tiring to hear someone say “Free Basics violates net neutrality”. The statement is plain wrong.
Tim Wu (the creator of the term) clarifies that not every network has to be neutral, just the way the Internet is carried needs to be neutral [1]. Free Basics/Airtel Zero are new networks, which do not affect the way carriers carry the existing Internet.
The statement above translates to “Free Basics violates network neutrality of the public Internet”, which is not true — carriers leave the existing Internet as it is, while introducing a new network.
Zero-rated networks, network neutrality of the internet, internet privacy, barriers to entry are separate discussions. Campaigns lumping all concerns under the single banner of net neutrality are either ignoring the fact that they are spreading a misconception or are just using scare tactics.
Even more importantly, should we use high-minded philosophical principles formulated in Western public policy debates to delay the rollout of even a limited form of the Internet to the world’s poorest?
One of the first times I saw the Internet mentioned in literature, that cheesy metaphor ‘information superhighway’ was used. As cheesy as it sounds, it is a transformational (and accurate) metaphor. We can grimace as we hear dial-up tones and remind ourselves of the idealism. We can wax nostalgic as I did about our own stories while not bothering to fight so that others can sit in front of Medium and tell it. Worse, we can sit in ivory towers and fight to deny the poor access to the Internet.
If we sit back for a moment, forget our current sophistication of Internet use, and just imagine the transformative, revolutionary power that even a limited form of the Internet can unleash among people young and old, women and men with just a feature phone and cellular connection. These are not alien figures, not some disconnected, dystopian village in the depths of the imagination of a wealthy Government official — but ordinary people who may just find a great job, a loving partner and friendship with people all over the world like me and you through the Internet.
