Free Facebook-Backed Internet for Millions of Egyptians Shut Down

Developed under Facebook’s Internet.org branch, the service had over 3 million users in Egypt, a third of which were first-time users.

The company’s Free Basics service lets people in some countries access Facebook and some other websites without charge.

The program, launched with Etisalat Egypt, had been in place for some two months and was recently highlighted at an entrepreneurship fair in Cairo.

Facebook told the Associated Press it was working to resolve the situation.

A lawyer from NY that works on Internet and technology advocacy issues said that India was a test case for Facebook and other similar countries.

With the raging debate on the issue of Net neutrality, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has received over 18 lakh responses from stakeholders to its consultation paper on differential pricing for data services, the regulator said on Thursday.

They said comments received through Facebook or Free Basics are around 8 lakh. Through a deal between Facebook and local mobile operators, the data to access those services is free. Facebook’s Free Basics program has been the subject of a regulatory battle in India.

TRAI chairman R S Sharma said that a large percentage of responses received are about supporting Free Basics. “What reason is there for denying people free access to vital services for communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming and women’s rights?” he wrote.

“Absence of net neutrality will affect web innovations and create digital inequality in India”, India’s most valuable startup said in a statement. Indian regulators did so due to concerns about how Free Basics might affect net neutrality – concerns which have hounded the program since its inception. In an attempt to get leverage from supporters, Facebook launched a lavish campaign to canvass support for Free Basics.

The service was suspended in India last week.

Users, however, must be Reliance Communications customers, and are limited to a range of portals found within the application: Wikipedia, job listing sites, select weather, sports, and news outlets, and, naturally, Facebook and Facebook Messenger.

Lead by former FCC boss Kevin Martin (now Facebook’s global lobbyist) Facebook’s been waging a mammoth PR effort all week in the Indian media, effectively arguing that Facebook’s walled garden is better than no Internet at all.