The internet is a utility, like electricity and phone (mobile or land line.) When you are dying of anything, electricity might not help much either. I don't have numbers, but I'm guessing that most people in the areas he is interested in aren't dying, they are just poor. When you are poor, any utility which you can access for free is helpful (this assumes that these internet programs will be useable and widely available.)

When you are going hungry because you have ran out of food, then you might not even have the money to call or text someone for help. A free internet connection gives you a way to reach out to others when you can't afford other methods of communication. Free internet might allow you to do some sort of internet micro job when you can't afford your own line or an internet cafe. There is also online education.

Of course, you still need to be able to purchase devices to access the internet. People find a way to purchase things that are helpful though. There is a lot of poverty in the Philippines, but many people are able to buy a scooter. As tablets get cheaper, more people will be able to afford them. Free internet access would definitely improve lives here.

ETA: Of course, Bill has great experience with the sort of problems he is trying to solve. But I wonder if he has tried to live the struggle of a family which isn't starving, but simply regularly falls short. I would like to see him run a household of 8 with a budget of a few dollars a day and an occasional problem where money might not come in for a few days.

ETA ETA: The Philippines also has a lot of money coming in from remittances. Having the option to fire up your tablet and make a free call to a relative in the U.S. to send money is hugely helpful.

ETA ETA ETA > “Fine, go to those Bangalore Infosys centres, but just for the hell of it go three miles aside and go look at the guy living with no toilet, no running water,” Gates told the FT. “The world is not flat and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.”

Yes, but soon that same person might have a computer in the form of a smart phone or a tablet. Again, that computer would be much more useful when he is able to access the internet for free.

Bill has never thought much of the Internet, given his ignoring of it in favour of pushing MSN over adding TCP/IP to Windows 3.1 until late 1997.

Ok, ok. Stop the world. People is dying. Why don't people in Microsoft is not fighting hunger instead of doing new versions of Windows?