Facebook’s new service ignites net neutrality battle in India

India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the frontline against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country’s masses. TRAI is supposed to publish a paper on net neutrality and was welcoming user comments, with the deadline originally supposed to end on the 30th of December. The report quotes a senior government official as saying, “We have asked them (Reliance Communications) to stop it and they have given us a compliance report that it has been stopped”.

The hiatus of Free Basics in Egypt comes just two months after telecom provider Etisalat Egypt began offering the service.

Out of the 37 countries questioning the rationality of the service, India has been the most vocal. 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.

“If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services”, Zuckerberg wrote. Sharma on Thursday added that the paper, which has drawn a record number of responses, wasn’t “an opinion poll” and that respondents should answer the four specific questions raised.

Free Basics By Facebook is the new name for the old Internet.org’s app and mobile website.

Chairman R.S Sharma has moved to reiterate that the consultation paper was not in any way an ‘opinion paper’.

He said the regulator has received only 3.81 lakh comments from people claiming supporters of net neutrality.

Facebook said three million Egyptians had used the service, with a million of those going online for the first time.

Sharma said more than three-quarters of these 1.82 million comments will be disregarded as they did not follow the proper format. Since this initiative provides access to a limited number of websites, which now does not include Google, critics believe that it violates the equal access premise of net neutrality and will give the social networking company a huge influence over the internet.

While Free Basics is now on ice in Egypt and India, the program could make a comeback after regulators in each country have a chance to examine it. While Free Basics toes the line with net neutrality, it is hard to argue the benefits of bringing more people to the modern age, making the issue a worthwhile discussion for each nation in the program.