Can't somebody explain why I am dead wrong here? I have a gut feeling it doesn't stack up. But to answer your question: Free because cost is a barrier to the other free - free speech. And yes it is very affordable - especially to ISPs, should not be a problem at all for them to provide completely gratis universal access. This way people who cannot afford it - and there are currently people who cannot afford it - get access to the internet and therefore education, so they can get better jobs thereby alleviating poverty so in the end they can afford those sweet high bandwidth charges. The American Dream. (the nice one where you work hard and become successful - not the one where your dad leaves you billions and then when you lose it all you get the enemy to hack you rich and powerful again)

>And yes it is very affordable - especially to ISPs, should not be a problem at all for them to provide completely gratis universal access.

The ISPs wouldn't be so well off once you make their main product free. Investment in network infrastructure would go to zero in this system. They would all go bankrupt pretty quickly actually. The only way to keep the internet running with a mandate to offer it free would be to nationalize it. And once it's nationalized, forget about improvements to the network or new generations of mobile internet tech.

Internet costs <$50 a month. You want to effectively nationalize an entire industry because that's too expensive in your opinion.