Facebook’s Free Basics service shut down Egypt

“We know that when people have access to the Internet they also get access to jobs, education, healthcare, communication”, said Zuckerberg.

According to sources, comments received through Facebook or Free Basics platform are around 8 lakh. Industry stake holders feel that Free Basics allow access to certain websites and is against the concept of Net Neutrality. “We expect stakeholder who participate in the process to provide meaningful inputs to us…We have asked a question on differential pricing and people have responded saying they love Free Basics”, Mr. Sharma told The Hindu.

Meanwhile, in India, the premier Indian Institute Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have criticised the social networking giant Facebook’s free basics initiative labelling it as “flawed” and “misleading”.

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.

Mark Zuckerberg’s most ambitious advertising campaign in India, Free Basics which is part of the larger Internet.org operations, has run into fresh troubles with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). The telecom regulator has also received similar number of messages from people opposing Facebook’s Free Basics and other zero-rating programmes, and about 3,000 individual messages. However, Net neutrality activists say such a move will violate the core principle that everyone should have unrestricted access to the Internet and it should not be regulated by a company.

“I don’t have any comments to make on Free Basic”.

This has, therefore, prompted TRAI to extend the deadline of receiving the comments on its Consultation Paper to January 7, instead of December 30 and review of the comments to January 14 from January 7.

Telecom network operator Etisalat Egypt, a partner of Facebook in Egypt, has suspended the free internet service that it began providing two months ago, Engadget reported. Nor does this appear to be a competition issue, given that nothing stops Facebook’s competitors – Google, say, or a consortium of Indian start-ups – from offering competing free services.