Because Free Basics does not charge different amounts of money for different web services and simply provides free access to certain websites, Zuckerberg claims that it’s not violating open internet rules.
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Some 3.2 million people have petitioned India’s telecoms regulator not to ban Free Basics, formerly named Internet.org. It launched nationwide last month after being trialled in several states. Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for the “Airtel Zero” service along with Facebook’s Internet.org service that it later rebranded as Free Basics.
A Facebook Inc.-backed service that offered free, limited access to the Internet in Egypt has been shut down, a spokeswoman said.
For his part, Zuckerberg argued in the Times of India that internet access is a right and that Free Basics doesn’t clash with net neutrality. But content providers must apply to and be approved by Facebook to be accessible.
The crackdown by Egypt government is definitely a setback for Facebook’s ambitious program as Egyptian government did not clarify why the service was halted.
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on Wednesday said differential pricing violates principles of net neutrality.
Egypt did not disclose the reason for shutting down the free Internet service.
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.
“If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services”, Mr. Zuckerberg said in an op-ed in the Times of India this week. But users have to pay for content that is not offered by the companies that partner with Facebook. The regulator has received about 1.65 million comments, the highest ever on any paper floated by Trai till date. “Because if they sign on, Free Basics can give them phenomenal reach”, said Guhesh Ramanathan, cofounder of Excubator, a startup incubator in Bengaluru.
If Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is to have its way with Free Basics, it will have to address all the net neutrality concerns already raised.
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On Tuesday, the faculty members of India’s leading institutions of science education Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-mainly the computer science and electrical departments-in a statement rejected Facebook’s Free Basics proposal.
