Tim Berners-Lee said that he would like to see everybody given a low-bandwidth connection “by default”.
He said the web could be instrumental in giving people access to critical services such as healthcare.
Currently, he said, just one-fifth of the world’s population has access to the web.
“What about the other 80%?” he asked the audience at the Nokia World conference in London.
“I would like to see people enrolled in a cheap data plan by default. I would like them to get it for free.” According to BBC
The question of whether the Internet should be free or not has been debated for some time now. The camp that believes it should states that communication is a fundamental human right, that Internet access is a necessity nowadays and points to the fact that in 2004, President Bush set a goal of affordable nationwide broadband by 2007, yet today over 100 million Americans still lack access to broadband.
The camp that is against free access underscores the dangers of the government controlling the Internet, and also states: "Among the roughly 27% of adult Americans who do not use the Internet, only 12% cited lack of access as the cause. In addition, 62% of dial-up users have no interest in switching to broadband.It makes little sense for government to subsidize or even give away broadband connections when so many people who could get broadband, don’t."
The solution could perhaps be to customize Internet pricing so that heavy users pay more than average users –- thus making it affordable to most to use the Internet for basic needs.
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