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.
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The deadline for receiving comments was ending on Wednesday.
Sharma said TRAI has received 18.27 lakh comments till now, out of which 14.34 lakh were in support of Free Basics and the comments did not answer the questions asked by the regulator.
The Free Basics program was suspended in India earlier this month while the country’s telecommunications regulator considered granting the service specific approval.
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”. The program was being used by over 3 million Egyptians.
Egypt has now become the second country to shut down Facebook’s controversial free internet service after India did the same last week, according to a report from the Associated Press today.
Academicians from India’s premier institutes – IITs and IISc – have slammed Facebook’s Free Basics initiative, terming it “flawed” and “misleading”.
Facebook has been aggressively pushing a campaign where it is asking users to support its Free Basics scheme under which the user can access some websites without paying Internet charges.
Zuckerberg says “certain basic services” are important for people’s well being in all societies, we have collections of free books in libraries, free basic healthcare.
“Facebook will have access to all your apps’ contents”.
The final decision in this issue will be taken by TRAI by the end of January, till then it has asked Reliance – the sole telecom partner of Facebook in India – to put Free Basics on hold.
The TRAI on December 9 said differential pricing of data services by various operators might potentially go against the principle of non-discriminatory tariff and sought comments or opinions from stakeholders.
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As per SavetheInternet forum, the net neutrality principle says that internet service providers should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that rides over their networks.
