I'm guessing that in these countries the cost of Internet traffic is dominated by the undersea cables at their borders.
Facebook has been paying to have new undersea cables laid. This is done as part of a consortium, but those cables only have 6-12 strands in them (the repeaters are bulky) so owning even just one whole strand of fiber in an undersea cable is still an obscene amount of bandwidth for a single company that isn't in the business of reselling bandwidth.
Free Basics was not allowed in India by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India[0]. The list of countries where Free Basics is currently operated is listed on Internet.org website[1].
anuila|5 years ago
octoberfranklin|5 years ago
Facebook has been paying to have new undersea cables laid. This is done as part of a consortium, but those cables only have 6-12 strands in them (the repeaters are bulky) so owning even just one whole strand of fiber in an undersea cable is still an obscene amount of bandwidth for a single company that isn't in the business of reselling bandwidth.
navanchauhan|5 years ago
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/8/10913398/free-basics-india...
[1] https://info.internet.org/en/story/where-weve-launched/