Facebook says more than three million people have petitioned the Indian regulator, TRAI, in support of Free Basics.
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Therefore, shares in carmaker Toyota, for example, Toyota dropped 2 percent and electronics giant Sony fell 1.49 percent. In other trading, some of the biggest decliners in the US were companies that sharply outpaced the market a year ago .
It said some service providers were offering differential data tariff, either free or discounted, on certain contents of particular websites, applications or platforms. It’s unclear why the new free internet service stopped working. Free Basics approval in India is thus crucial if the social giant is to bolster its 1.55 billion user base. The regulator had received about 10 lakh comments on the first consultation paper it floated on net neutrality.
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Out of the 37 countries questioning the rationality of the service, India has been the most vocal.
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Facebook told the Associated Press it was working to resolve the situation.
TRAI has also asked Reliance Communication, Facebook’s partner in India for “Free Basics”, to put the service on hold till the authority considers all the details and terms and conditions of the service.
RS Sharma, chairman, TRAI, said that the regulatory authority will not reject the 14 lakh responses favouring free basics and will give a “fair chance” to the respondents to rectify the error and send their answers “question by question”.
Facebook’s Free Basics program was launched with Etisalat Egypt. The service, which has attracted much controversy, provides users with free access to select websites on mobile phones.
The telecommunications ministry said the grounds for shutting down the service were not related to security.
While the reason behind Egypt’s ban is still unclear, it more than likely has to do with the criticisms concerning Free Basics and net neutrality.
Mr Zuckerberg has got personally involved, arguing his company’s case in an editorial in The Times of India newspaper this week. Google Chief Executive Sunder Pichai, who was born in the Indian city of Chennai, visited the country this month and reiterated plans to provide Wi-Fi at 500 railway stations and allow Google users to type in 11 Indian languages, including Modi’s native Gujarati, on the Android platform.
“We do not charge anyone anything for Free Basics….There are no ads in the version of Facebook on Free Basics”.
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“In addition to being against net neutrality, the differential pricing models suggested by TRAI prima facie also violate the regulator’s own stated principles of intervening in pricing”, IAMAI president Subho Ray said. “We believe that the spirit of net neutrality should apply equally to all companies in India”.
