“This flaw is not visible to the lay person as it’s a technical detail, but it has deep and disturbing implications”.
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However, critics in India are accusing Facebook of using “Free Basics” as a disguise to grab users in India ahead of competition.
I don’t have any comments on Free Basics. Indian regulators did so due to concerns about how Free Basics might affect net neutrality – concerns which have hounded the program since its inception. While Facebook argues for Net Neutrality laws in the United States, and supports permission-less innovation in that country, in India, it wants a permission-based Internet through its partnership for Free Basics.
Launched past year in Zambia, Free Basics, earlier known as internet.org, has run in to trouble elsewhere on grounds that it infringes the principle of net neutrality.
On December 12, Trai floated a new consultation paper questioning differential data pricing for content services, although the paper does not specifically mention the term net neutrality.
The industry body, in its submission, agreed that there was an urgent need to connect the millions of unconnected people in India and narrow the digital and developmental divide. Start-ups, entrepreneurs and an internet association have opposed offering free internet through Facebook’s Free Basics. Now the problem for this is that we had asked for response to the specific question of differential pricing… instead we have got responses on supporting Free Basics.
“These voices should be heard”, said Sharma adding that in cases where the regulator has email IDs of the respondents, TRAI will send an email to those respondents and ask them to re-submit their responses along with justifications again. Services which compete with telecom operator services will not be allowed on Free Basics. The country is home to Facebook’s second largest market outside the US Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed FB local partner Reliance Communication to halt the service pending further review.
The deadline for comments on the paper ended on Wednesday. The authority however has chose to extend this until January 7, 2016, which will give users more time to comment and make their opinions heard.
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Tech giants including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of ecommerce major Paytm, have petitioned TRAI, the telecom regulator, to claim that differential pricing for Internet access would lead to a “few players like Facebook with its Free Basics platform acting as gate-keepers”.
