Trai receives record response on net neutrality issue

The Internet.org project, which Facebook launched in India in association with Reliance Communications, was recently renamed as Free Basics and offers free access to a set of websites and services with the objective of introducing Internet. Trai has received about 16.5 lakh comments-the highest ever on any paper floated by it till date, sources said.

While it “appreciated the massive participation”, Trai said a preliminary scrutiny of responses showed that 14.34 lakh responses were in support of specific products without answering the questions put up for consultation.

The telecommunications regulator said it will finalise the new rules by end of January after a hearing process with stakeholders that will extend through the month.

The Free Basics initiative taken by Facebook has spread to 37 countries so far and is seen as an effort to help emerging economies connect with the rest of the world.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said it had received record submissions on a consultation paper for framing differential pricing rules that will decide the fate of Facebook Inc’s free Internet in India. Chairman R.S. Sharma Thursday said that the consultation paper wasn’t “an opinion poll” and that respondents should answer the four specific questions raised in the consultation paper on differential pricing. We did not want to ignore such a large number of comments and extended the deadline so that people can send proper responses – logical answers to the questions in the paper.

Facebook announced that Free Basics, its program for providing free internet for over 30 developing nations, will no longer be available in Egypt. Airtel Zero initially started the whole net neutrality debate where it proposed charging users for calls made using mobile data, but fortunately, common sense prevailed and the network had to withdraw the plan following public outrage.

Zuckerberg wrote, “Instead of welcoming Free Basics as an open platform that will partner with any telco, and allows any developer to offer services to people for free, they claim – falsely – that this will give people less choice”.

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.