Taking on social networking giant Facebook’s ambitious ‘free Internet’ plans, telecom major Bharti Airtel’s chief Sunil Mittal has said that companies should do philanthropy if they stop charging for mobile Internet.

Facebook has launched an ‘Internet. org’ initiative under which users can access Internet free of charge for select websites if they come through a partner telecom operator. Incidentally, Airtel Africa is one such partner for Facebook while rival Reliance Communications has partnered Facebook in India for this initiative, which is based on assumption that bringing more people to the Internet fold by offering them free service initially is good for the industry.

Mittal, who met Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, said that the social networking major is right in its thinking that such an initiative would expand the market, but telecom operators also need to get their revenues and charge for the services.

“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. SMSs have gone more or less, voice is going down and they (Facebook) recognise that,” Mittal told the media in the Spanish city. He added that telecom companies are as such not making large money.

The comments incidentally come at a time when a high-pitched spectrum auction is underway in India and committed bids worth about Rs 86,000 crore have come in within first four days of bidding crossing the minimum targeted amount of Rs 82,000 crore.
Telecom companies say they invest billions of dollars in spectrum, network and other operations, but they argue that Internet-based entities offering pseudo-telecom services are piggy-backing on the mobile operators’ networks without bearing much investment on their own.

At the same event, UK-based telecom giant Vodafone’s global CEO Vittorio Colao reportedly said about Facebook’s Internet plan that it is almost like Zuckerberg does philanthropy, “but with my money”. Mittal cautioned that investment in mobile networks by industry will go down as Internet-based messaging and calling services are “cannibalising” revenues of telecom firms.

“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.

Source: Business Today