India is well on its way to digitalisation. The Jio offers have everyone hooked to the idea of free internet. Facebook also has plans to provide free internet in rural India. Similarly, the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba, is reportedly planning to provide free internet services in India.
Business Insider has reported that Alibaba is already in talks with telecom operators and wifi providers for the supply of free internet. It has an well established internet company in China with UC Web and UC Browser being its highest grossing products.
Facebook pioneered with the idea of providing internet supply to the rural areas, Alibaba is following in its footsteps by focussing on “states that are suffering more (from connectivity issues) and also will have comprehensive analysis on already existing consumers who will actually need this kind of service.”
Free Basics and internet.org were launched by Facebook back in the day. These two reached an untimely death due to some clearance issues with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The initiatives could not even gain a little bit of attention.
According to TRAI’s rules not all the content could be tied to free usage, under the Free Basics initiative, user was allowed to access only a few sites.
On the other hand, let us hope that Alibaba initiative has a better reception than Facebook and proves beneficial to India. It would be a huge step forward in the process of digitalisation of India, including the recent movement towards cashless economy.
Jack Huang, President of Overseas Business, Alibaba Mobile Business told Business Insider in a statement, “We will definitely look at the opportunity to work together with service providers or even some Wi-Fi providers. We are trying to offer lower cost data to users and better connectivity, even free of cost connectivity. Wi-Fi providers and other players can be potentials and we are in talk.”
