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Comment by mehrdada | Hacker News Reader

Right, but if you look at the adoption curves of technology, empirically, the long run comes quite quickly, so it is questionable that accelerating technology adoption is worth the long term monopoly leverage it brings.

EDIT: this is especially true considering Internet.org, despite its pitch, does not actually bring much to the connectivity infrastructure. It works in places where mobile connectivity infrastructure already exists, just (presumably) not affordable enough. It is purely an economic arbitrage game, not infrastructure development.

EDIT2: I also speculate that competition between big players (e.g. Google vs Facebook) will not help resolve the problem either. Since all incumbents benefit from stuff like this, and almost all newcomers lose, big guys have few incentives to break down such paradigms after they are built up (very much like gerrymandering that Democrats and Republicans both like as it benefits them all).

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> It works in places where mobile connectivity infrastructure already exists, just (presumably) not affordable enough. It is purely an economic arbitrage game, not infrastructure development.

It's worse than that. Creating a substandard product and giving it away for free destroys infrastructure development. A large mass of customers are going to take the free offering and each one who does and would otherwise have paid comes out of the budget the provider has available for expansion and upgrades.

This doesn't change whether Facebook is building their own infrastructure or leasing someone else's. If they lease existing infrastructure then they're large enough to pay wholesale rather than retail prices and the (large) difference comes out of the local provider's capital budget. If they build their own and sell below cost then it's even worse -- competitors will lose both subscribers and margins if not go out of business entirely.

Here's how I expect Aquila to work: They'll install it and drive all the local competitors out of business, and the incumbents' infrastructure will fall into disrepair or be sold for scrap. Then at some future date there will be an economic recession and Facebook accountants will wonder whether it makes sense to keep all these drones in the air to provide free access to a bunch of customers in developing countries with no money who are therefore highly undesirable to advertisers. The answer will be no.

So they'll either discontinue the project or start charging money. At that point those people will have gone from paying money for the real internet to either paying money for the fake internet, or having no access whatsoever.

I kind of agree with Zaidf, in countries like India it might not come as quickly as you think. But I think FB and Indian Govt should be given a chance to iterate over this plan, see what works and what doesn't and then regulate again. Iterate and regulate...

Definitely not.

For one, India's tech growth (even if it is in outsourcing) has been because it escaped the then watchers. They are more likely to build rules which help close partners to the government, or people who spend the time to help the government formulate their plans (Like facebook is).

Secondly, even in America, the one thing which is pushing adoption of better speeds in cities is the availability of a competitor like Google Fibre.

India had a lot more competition, but the recent Supreme Court judgement cancelled a lot of licenses which were given out, and many players were forced to requote for licenses in their circles.

As you can imagine, many smaller players were completely cut out, and today most of the market share for mobile telephony is distributed between 4 players.

Iteration can mean iteration of incrementally more regulatory capture each time.

You seem to be misinformed regarding infrastructure. Please research facebook's Aquila before posting.

This would be a great opportunity to correct any misconceptions that might be present. If not for the op, for all the readers.

I googled it up, and from the dates on news reports, it looks like it's been stuck in "ready for testing" limbo for months and there are zero meaningful specs or details on the drone itself published.

I also found Tim Berners-Lee trashing the buisness model, and philanthropist Bill Gates pointing out there are more important problems to solve in the developing world before connectivity.

I didn't think I could be more negative on Facebook's shitty internet.org, but now I am. Thanks for encouraging me to do the research!

> philanthropist Bill Gates pointing out there are more important problems to solve in the developing world before connectivity.

Perhaps 'connectivity' is what Mark Zuckerberg is good at solving. We all should be doing things we are good at if its not harming anyone. At this moment people just have theories that internet.org might not be a good thing. People can be wrong, only time will tell.

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