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Sunil Mittal calls it right: what Zuck is doing with Internet.org isn’t philanthropy

Taking on Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious Internet.org, Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal said that the service will only serve Facebook at an event in the Mobile World Congress, reports the Press Trust of India. "He (Zuckerberg) is saying that make Internet.org lite version of Facebook free of data charge, so that people will upgrade. People will come to internet for the first time. The point is that it is self-serving for them," Mittal said. "I told him (Zuckerberg) that you are right that this (internet.org) expands the market. At the end, you must understand that we (telecom operators) need to charge you for something. SMSes have gone more or less, voice is going down and they (Facebook) recognise that," Mittal said in a media interaction. "If you are going to make the data free, then let's do completely philanthropic projects. Government must make spectrum free, there should be free network, but it is not happening," the billionaire industrialist said, while adding that telecom companies were as such not making large money," he added. Internet.org is looking to bring the next billion people onto the Internet, however telecom operators say that  Internet services do not invest in the costly infrastructure required so that people can access applications on their smartphones. In India,  operators are also lobbying hard for Internet services to be regulated and are also looking for a revenue sharing model. Under Internet.org only certain services which Facebook deems essential will be free and not attract any data charges with its tie-ups with operators.…

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