The desire to provide millions of Indians access to the internet they have been denied so far stirs so strongly within Facebook’s bosom as to make it invent Free Basics, a platform for select sites, the data cost of accessing which would be borne by Facebook. This is the claim that Facebook uses to justify the privileging of some sites over others that Free Basics implies. If this passion is so strong, why not simply bear the data cost of all phones priced below a cut-off, to ensure that only the poor get the benefit of the subsidy? Or even better, why not invest the money in creating an infrastructure of free Wi-Fi for all citizens in every town with a population above a cut-off figure, to be determined on the basis of the availability of funds?

The internet should remain free and open, with no access provider privileging or degrading access to any site. This is the structure designed to fully tap the revolutionary potential of the internet to empower humanity to learn, transact, innovate, create, earn and enrich. While expanding internet usage, Free Basics ends up eroding such an open structure of the internet, discriminating against all sites that are not part of the free platform. Instead of such a platform, why not fund setting up the infrastructure of free Wi-Fi? Since spectrum is scarce in India, Wi-Fi providers can generate revenue by letting telcos offload a part of their data and voice traffic to Wi-Fi, even as Wi-Fi is offered free to consumers. The government of India already seeks to create Wi-Fi hotspots at railway stations and the like, with support from Microsoft and Google. Why not scale up this activity significantly, and fit a revenue model on to it, benefiting spectrum-starved telcos and our data-starved public?

Of course, this would call for additional pieces of software, on telco equipment and consumer handsets. That would be a relatively minor hurdle. The big one is clarity on the real goal being pursued while promoting free access to a select few websites. Once that is achieved, something on the lines of New York’s gigabit Wi-Fi being rolled out right now is entirely doable in Indian towns.