Comment by firasd

I'm quoting your phrases to contrast that the fact that, notwithstanding governmental failure and corruption, the reason Facebook can do this at all is because the spread of mobile phones and internet access in India has been a major success story. There are about 900 million mobile connections, and internet adoption is accelerating, with nearly 100 million users added in an year (this is close a third of the total internet user base, so we're talking double-digit growth over 20%.)

Facebook has not come up with a business model that makes it profitable for telecoms to serve people. They've just used their negotiating power, PR resources, government and corporate lobbying to convince telecoms to zero-rate Free Basics, calling it philanthropy.