In brainstorming possible alternatives, Song realized he kept returning to the same question: What if all mobile phones came automatically connected to the Internet at no additional charge?

The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that what seemed like an idle fantasy might actually be a feasible plan to improve Internet access. Song’s idea is this: Mobile-network operators could make it so cellphones automatically come with low-speed, data-limited Internet access. Meaning: Mobile phones would automatically offer basic connectivity—essentially, data that you don’t have to pay for—so that people could access important online resources. However, the feature would be low-cost enough to implement that it would still make good business sense for providers.

“Each person that gets added to the network adds value to everybody on the network,” Song said. “It occurred to me that that’s why mobile networks connect people for free to the voice network. It costs them millions of dollars per year to maintain ... but they add value to the network because they become other people who can be called on the network. Why wouldn’t that also apply to data? Don’t the same principles apply?”

There are other examples that demonstrate this same principle, suggesting that there might be good incentive for mobile-network operators to offer free, basic Internet. One precedent is the larger shift toward free email services. “And it wasn’t that long ago that people used to pay for browsers, either,” Song said. “You would buy a browser like a piece of software. But Internet companies recognized that the browser was the great enabler, so what was a paid service, previously, became a free service.”

For such a shift to take place on mobile networks, Song says there will have to be a more rigorous economic analysis. But he believes a good starting point might be to enable, by default, free 2G Internet connections at speeds around 9.6 kilobits per second—which is slow, really slow if you’re used to high-speed Internet. (He outlined his proposal in more detail in a blog post.)

“That’s about a quarter of the speed of what dial-up would be,” Song said. “So what would need to happen is you would need to have a profile for your phone that is secured to that basic rate—so it wouldn’t go downloading tons of stuff, you could disable images, but things like messaging services and basic Facebook would all work.”

Universal access to high-speed Internet might be the ultimate goal, but a slow connection is better than no connection, he says. “I think we underestimate how profoundly disadvantaged those without affordable access are, as the value of the Internet goes up and up and up—whether it’s agricultural information, or job information, or access to critical government.”

Of course, just because something would be good for people, doesn’t mean a company will take steps (and spend money) to make it happen. “I think there would be push back from mobile-network operators in all kinds of places,” he said. “It will take some visionary action to make this happen.”