Summary:
In 2016, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) banned free mobile data programs that favour some Internet services over others. These regulations, issued after months of intense public debate over how to extend the Internet to India's poorest citizens, effectively blocked Facebook's controversial Free Basics program in the country. The Free Basics program intended to offer people no-fee access to a text-only mobile version of Facebook, including certain news, health, job, and other services. Facebook described the program as a way to introduce the poor and the digital illiterate to
Allegations:
- The Free Basics programme quickly became a target of critics, who said that this was an attempt to steer new Internet users to use Facebook and other services that were working with the company. They argued that Free Basics and the other so called free apps, which are a set of apps which the mobile operator or internet service provider did not charge customers to use, violated the concept of net neutrality.
- Many proponents of net neutrality criticised the program for only serving a tiny Facebook-endorsed portion of the Internet to users for free, while everything else must be paid for to access. This was seen as a violation of net neutrality whose premise is that all things on the internet should be treated the same to preserve competition.
- One regulator blasted the petition launched by Facebook calling it a “crudely majoritarian and orchestrated opinion poll.”The regulators had asked for people to pen down answers to four policy questions not engage in clicktivism.
- The opposition movement was organised by a loose collective called SaveTheInternet.in, which gathered the Indian tech and startup scene to argue that this program not only affects net neutrality, but also them. Free Basics is detrimental to the little guy to be discovered unless they joined the program. 457 companies signed a single letter opposing Free Basics saying that the program created a bottleneck to web access at the very moment Indian startups were taking off.
- The TRAI in its new regulations which discontinued the Free Basic program, said that mobile phone companies should not be allowed to "shape the users' Internet experience" by providing free access only to certain services.
Defence:
- Facebook painted its opponents as elite scrooges stuck on "extreme" net neutrality principles, “even,” as Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Times of India op-ed read, “if it means leaving a billion people behind.”
- Facebook denied allegations that it rejected applications to the program from competitors with the Internet.org Vice President Chris Daniels calling this speculation from critics "bull".
- In December 2015, Facebook circulated a petition on its platform, asking users to support “digital equality,” the signatures of which were forwarded to regulators.