Facebook fights for free Internet in India, global test-case

Tech giants including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of ecommerce major Paytm, have petitioned TRAI, the telecom regulator, to claim that differential pricing for Internet access would lead to a “few players like Facebook with its Free Basics platform acting as gate-keepers”.

“Consultation papers are not opinion polls”. The deadline for comments on the paper was ending today. These responses are not helpful at all…but we felt ignoring them is not a solution given that we have received the highest ever responses on a consultation paper, which shows that the issue is important to people.

Since most of the responses did not answer the questions posed by Trai, they are of no use to the regulator. 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.

“No, the TSPs (Telecom Service Providers) should not be allowed to have differential pricing for data usage for accessing different websites, applications or platforms”, IAMAI said in its comment over Trai’s “Consultation Paper on Differential Pricing for Data Services”. But users have to pay for content that is not offered by the companies that partner with Facebook.

We have already extended the last date for sending comments by a week to January 7.

Simply put, net neutrality is the principle that all online traffic should be treated equally.

In December, the telecoms regulator in India asked mobile networks to suspend the scheme in the country while it considered granting it specific approval.

It is important to note that Facebook has launched a multi-media campaign to build the case in favour of its Free Basic – its revised version of the earlier internet.org initiative that was shelved amidst protest by the users. 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.