Social computing

Abstract

An emerging trend in developing regions is to give users access to certain Internet services for free (or zero-rated) over cellular connections from phones. This can help bring the Internet to users who otherwise could not afford to access it, and potentially attract future paying sub- scribers. Free Basics is an initiative backed by Facebook to provide users in developing countries free mobile Internet access to selected services. By partnering with telecom providers in some of the developing countries, the Facebook FreeBasics program offers a set of free Internet services in these regions, with the cost borne by telecom providers. The approach of providing a subset of Internet services to users for free has generated tremendous debate in developing countries,as there are questions about what is made free and at what (non-monetary) cost to users. That said, most of the debates are qualitative or theoretical in nature. In this project, our goal is to provide quantitative data, through careful experimentation, measurement and analysis, to inform these debates.