&gt; but tomorrow the poor will still have no Internet access<p>That would still be the case if the verdict was the other way around. There&#x27;s no evidence that Free Basics actually brought a significant number of new people on the internet (the rate of people cited as joining Free Basics is comparable to the rate of people joining the internet in general, so it didn&#x27;t change anything)<p>Note that data plans are pretty cheap in India. The cost of a smartphone that can handle modern websites (<i>especially</i> Facebook, which breaks on old&#x2F;slow phones and browsers) is more than the cost of a few year&#x27;s worth of data.