Facebook announced that Free Basics, its program for providing free internet for over 30 developing nations, will no longer be available in Egypt. Only 252 million of India’s 1.3 billion people have Internet access, making it a growth market for firms including Google and Facebook.
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Another country has banned Facebook’s Free Basics program.
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Since Free Basics would only be providing access for Facebook’s pre-approved list of sites, putting the rest behind a paywall, many critics believe the service to violate net neutrality, as well as mask an possible ulterior motive for Facebook.
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Facebook said three million Egyptians had used the service, with a million of those going online for the first time.
The industry group said also that even the pricing models suggested by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in a discussion paper on differential pricing for data services contravene the watchdog’s own stated principles of being non-discriminatory, transparent, non-predatory, and non-misleading.
A Facebook spokesman said the aim of the Free Basics initiative was to give people a taste of what the internet can offer.
In Egypt, the Free Basics program was available on telecom firm Etisalat Egypt’s network. However, a majority of these responses -around 14 lakh – did not provide any answer to the questions posed by the regulator, and supported Free Basics. And, why the telecom companies are offering free access to Facebook only. Authorities in Egypt effectively suspended the service when a required permit was not renewed after it lapsed on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Trai had asked Reliance Communications to keep services of Facebook’s free Internet platform, Free Basics, in abeyance, till the issue on differential pricing is sorted out.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg vehemently disagreed with these claims, saying that “If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services“. 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.
