[arihant]

Okay, this has nothing to do with supporting the poor as the comments here are suggesting, and as Airtel is trying to paint it. Poor can avail month-long 1GB data at $3 in India. All major providers have a plan that makes Facebook, Whatzapp, Google, Twitter, Instagram free for $0.5 a month. We already have plans for the poor, this is not it.

This plan is the following - if you take Airtel Zero, you cannot access any other website. Period. That's right, no option to pay for other websites at all. Once you opt-in, your web is restricted. This is not like the plans for poor we already have, where you pay little or nothing for some websites, but can use regular plans to access rest of the web. With the new Airtel Zero, you waive off the rights to rest of the web as soon as you opt-in.

This is a net neutrality debate. We have plans for poor, this is not it.

[Grue3]

The difference is marginal. With $0.5/$3 plan, if the person is poor, they can't afford to go to expensive websites, so they're still locked to the cheap websites. It's still a "net neutrality" situation and the two plans have the same effect in practice. The only solution is to make the entire Internet free for everyone, which is, of course, not happening.

[arihant]

It's not a scheme for people struggling for food. Airtel Zero is only for companies offering Android and iPhone apps. If a person can afford a $120 phone at minimum, they can pay $3 a month. The "poor" is a marketing stunt here. In no way will this scheme make internet accessible for the next half billion in India.

[Someone1234]

> $120 phone at minimum

Uhh, no. I've paid $50 for this (non-contract):

http://www.gsmarena.com/zte_blade-3391.php

And that was new and in 2010. There are tons of amazing phones well below $70, in particular in "developing" markets (like India) where they get some exclusive low end phones that are a bargain for the spec.

If you go look on Airtel's website right now, go mobile offers, buy now, then uncheck the filter at the top and organise Low->High.

They have a 4.5" Android Quad Core, Lollipop phone for $87. If you can live with KitKat then they start at $31.95. If you want a "nice" Kitkat phone then $65.65 will buy you one.

So, yeah, $120 is nowhere ballpark near the minimum. The minimum in the literal sense is $10 and the minimum with Android is $28.81. And that's just buying directly from Airtel, new.

[drpgq]

Wow $3 for a GB of data? I'm paying more than three times as much in Canada and that's considered a good deal.

[rdsubhas]

You pay the rest in Time, basically. The $3 internet is so slow that you'll spend an eternity waiting for any page (other than google's homepage) to load. Its for the most basic of internet messaging and email. Youtube? Forget about it.

[notahacker]

$3 a GB is not cheap when it's 10% of your monthly income, which is the case for somewhere between a quarter and a half of Indian citizens on a dollar a day, depending on whose statistics you regard as the most representative and accurate. And that's a number which has fallen heavily in recent years.

That certainly puts things into perspective when talking about the downside to requiring people pay for bandwidth even if the app-owners want them to have it for free...

[arihant]

That quarter and a half billion cannot afford a smartphone yet. So mobile data scheme for apps is not a conversation about them. It is peanuts for people who can afford a smartphone.

[notahacker]

I wouldn't call $3 per gigabyte "peanuts" to someone buying the ~$30 extreme low-end Android phones, or indeed a much poorer person that possesses a battered second-hand feature phone with a Facebook app, which could at least theoretically be covered with this sort of program.

[arihant]

As I said before, we already have plans that give access to basic websites for $0.5 a month. Facebook-only access is like $0.1 a month. But with these plans, I can still access the rest of the web if I choose to, I just have to pay. $0.5 is what a poor person pays for lunch on job site, just to put the price in perspective.

I'm not arguing the free part, I'm arguing the fact that as soon as you opt-in for the new Zero plan, the regular web just cannot be had, even for price. The only web that will work on the phone is apps by Zero Rent providers. No websites, even if you wish to pay for them.

And this is bad for poor people to boot. What if they want e-governance features, no sir, wait in line and be treated poorly. What if they want to access healthcare information, no sir, wait in private hospitals and be treated poorly. But wait, get this, you can shop on Flipkart for no cost. Yay!

[icebraining]

If they want e-governance and healthcare information, why did they subscribe to a service that didn't have them? Is there any argument that justifies this besides "they're too stupid to know better"?

[ForHackernews]

Canada happens to be a much wealthier country than India.

[rjuyal]

$3/GB => 2G connection

[jacquesm]

One of the participants will sooner or later set up a proxy.

[Tarang]

The participants have to pay for the data instead of their clients. A proxy would effectively cost them.

[mobiplayer]

And it could be a good investment in exchange of proxying all your customer's traffic. That's probably the wet dream of some C level executives.