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Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

>>people said "that's not enough, I want more for free!"

That's not what people said. People wanted all things on the internet to be treated as equal, also known popularly around the world as 'net neutrality'.

There is a very little difference between, offering something for free. And offering different services for different prices.

For eg: Indian Telcos have been longing to bill VoIP calls as regular calls.

I'd rather pay to access everything with a uniform quality of service, than get into differential pricing. Pushing your hidden agendas through this way should not be welcome.

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You would rather pay for uniform access, but that's not an option for the market we are discussing. Given a large market that currently has nothing because they are unable to pay for anything, would you prefer that Facebook: A) Leave them alone with nothing. Or B) Give them free access to Facebook?

You are suggesting we sacrifice the 'net neutrality' principle for a short term gain. Once you let this happen, the telco's will continue with their differential pricing policies citing it has been done before.

Thank, but no thanks.

I would prefer we rather stick with the net neutrality principles.

I'm suggesting that it's complicated. In all of your replies you are talking about what you want to pay for and what you expect in return. But, this isn't about you. It's about hundreds of millions of the poorest people on Earth. If you went on tour of India to personally tell a few tens of thousands of them that because free Facebook access would set a bad precedent (which you are totally right about, btw) they should continue to be cut of entirely until they get rich enough to pay for the level of access you already enjoy, you might find that the issue warrants a bit more thought.

I'm from India.

Facebook access isn't like Polio vaccination. Poor people in India worry more about food than Facebook/Internet access. Even if they were given internet access, Most don't know how to read and write. Those capable of spending around 2000 rupees on a smartphone(lower middle class) can also buy a pre paid internet pack for an affordable price. And already do.

If you want to see the real innovation happening in countries like India to make Internet accessible to every one look at : http://www.saankhyalabs.com/ Who are working towards using wasted tv bandwidth for internet.

I agree with most of what you've said, but I think its inaccurate to say that most don't know how to read and write. According to the 2011 Census, the literacy rate is 74% [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Census_of_India#Literacy

Who is going to pay for the uniform access to everything you want?

We are not asking anything for free. We will pay for a internet connection, for the bandwidth and for the speed. Once done, we wish to use that bandwidth and speed they way we like.

But we are not going to pay extra money just to use a chat application over the internet, or make a VoIP call.

This isn't about you, though. It's about the millions of people who can't afford to pay.

Well, yes. Except, internet access isn't going to be the first problem they'd want to solve (or be solved).

That's fine, but providing internet access doesn't preclude others from solving other important (or perceivably more important) problems.

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