Facebook Free Basics Suspended In Egypt

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. 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.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been stumped by the nature of responses it received on its discussion for “Differential Pricing for Data Services”.

Net neutrality debate has started once again with Facebook’s launch of “Free Basics” in India.

TRAI chairman R S Sharma said that a large percentage of responses received are about supporting Free Basics.

Seems like many people don’t like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of free internet access (but to Facebook only) as has been evident by the ban faced by the company in India and Egypt. The idea behind Facebook’s “Free Basics” is to offer free internet access to smartphone users but the trouble is that everything at the moment opens via Facebook.

New Delhi, Dec.31: 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”.

“There is no reason to create a digital divide by offering a walled garden of limited services in the name of providing access to the poor”, they wrote. Facebook will have access to all your apps’ contents. “We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the Internet”. “Therefore, it has become hard for us to connect these answers to this paper”, Sharma said.

Launched previous year in Zambia, Free Basics, earlier known as internet.org, has run in to trouble elsewhere on grounds that it infringes the principle of net neutrality.

After our directive, Reliance Communications (Facebook’s India partner for Free Basics) has put on hold the commercial launch of Free Basics till we finalise our recommendations on the issue.

“In a democracy you have both sides – you have Facebook spending so much on the campaign and on the other side you have internet activists making their own efforts”, the TRAI’s Sharma told Reuters on Wednesday.

Operators will have to compensate users from tomorrow.