Facebook expands its free basics internet services on the Internet.org platform

Chris Daniels, vice-president of Internet.org, said the idea was to create a differentiation from the wider objectives of Internet.org. “We want to give people access to a few free basics services on the Internet and we know they will quickly understand the value of the Internet”, he said during an interaction at Facebook’s new office in Menlo Park.

When accessing a Free Basics website in a mobile browser, the service employs a “dual certificate” security model where the first certificate is for traffic encrypted between your device and Internet.org servers in both directions.

Facing criticism for being against the ethos of net neutrality, Facebook opened the platform to developers. “Internet.org was not designed to be a destination but its a digital literacy tool where people learn about the Internet and go on to explore all of it”, said Daniels.

Facebook said it was changing the name of the app in order “to better distinguish” the broader Internet.org intiaitive from this specifc app and its related services.

As of today, Free Basics offers more than 60 services across 19 countries, many of which are in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Starting today, people using the app or mobile web version can navigate to a menu where they can select which services to add to their list of free services.

While on paper making the platform open to all developers encourages transparency, Facebook still reserves the rights to which apps will finally be available. “We’ve had a lot of discussion in India about free basic services”. A platform, which the company announced for developers for the goal in May this year, is now open, the company said in Thursday’s update.

Following a walkout by many of its publisher partners in India, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had come out in defence of the programme, saying it did not block or throttle services and is not in conflict with Net neutrality.

Though Facebook describes Internet.org as a free initiative, and advertises it in a similar way as well. But the unfounded criticism has slowed the conversation.

The Internet.org platform, developed by Facebook, is designed to connect underserved communities worldwide to the internet, providing free online access to basic websites in developing countries in partnership with carriers.

He reiterated that the company does not pay telecom operators for the data, but the service providers do see benefit as “people move on to paid services soon”. In India, the company has been piloting Express Wi-Fi, a program under which local entrepreneurs are incentivised to setup Wi-Fi hotspots in various regions and sell data packs to users in the area.

The briefing also included a presentation by Dr. Yael Maguire of Facebook’s Connectivity Labs, featuring futuristic work done by his team to develop internet connectivity using solar-powered airplanes.