Facebook is partnering with two of Malawi's biggest Internet service providers to offer free basic Internet service to subscribers via Mark Zuckerberg's Internet.org initiative.
Zuckerberg himself announced that the move to expand to the southeast African nation now brings an additional one billion people online through Internet.org.
"Giving people free access is the right thing to do," Zuckerberg writes on his Facebook page. "We will keep connecting more people and more countries, and we won't stop until every person in the world can connect to the Internet."
Facebook is working with Telekom Networks Malawi and Airtel Malawi to bring basic Internet services to a country with a population of around 16 million. These services include Ask, Bing, UNICEF (for information about Ebola), Wikipedia, the local Nyasa Times, and, of course, Facebook.
"This development has come at the right time," says Airtel Malawi chief commercial officer Charles Kamoto. "We shall take the lead in escalating digital inclusion by reaching out and offering the best Internet to as many Malawians as possible. In this digital age, (the) Internet is yet another human right and the time is now for people in the country to enjoy this right freely."
The announcement comes amidst growing criticism of Internet.org, which others point out, goes against the basic principles of net neutrality by having Facebook choose which services should be available to users. Mohammad Tauheed, an architect in Bangladesh where Internet.org was recently launched, says calling Internet.org free Internet is "cheating and a gross violation of net neutrality."
"Selective content is not Internet. The Internet must remain open and must serve everything that is available on the (world wide web) equally," Tauheed says. "Selecting and throttling are fundamentally wrong and goes against net neutrality. I'd appreciate it if they'd serve even 10 people with free Internet, but only real Internet. As long as they are selecting contents for Internet.org and still calling it 'the Internet,' I will remain against it, I will keep criticizing it, and I will keep demanding 'net neutrality.'"
Zuckerberg defended his initiative against such criticisms in his most recent Q&A session, which the Facebook chief regularly holds to interact with the general public. In a Facebook post following the session, Zuckerberg further elaborated, arguing that "some connectivity is definitely better than none" and that offering the entire Internet for free would be too expensive for Internet.org and its partners.
"It's too expensive to make the whole Internet free. Mobile operators spend tens of billions of dollars to support all of Internet traffic. If it was all free, they'd go out of business," Zuckerberg says. "We actually don't choose the services by ourselves. We work with local governments and the mobile operators to identify local services in each country."
Photo: Andrew Feinberg | Flickr
