Net Neutrality establishes India’s maturity, says Prasad

In a direct outcome of the telecom regulator’s Monday order, barring differential pricing for Internet data, telcos have started pruning their offerings. “Internet.org has many initiatives, and we will keep working until everyone has access to the Internet”, he said in a Facebook post.

Facebook’s Free Basics service has been dealt a severe blow by India’s telecommunications regulator, which ruled on Monday that telecom service providers are prohibited from charging differently for data depending on the content or the application that the user is accessing. The service has been criticised outside India, too, with Facebook accused of infringing the principle of net neutrality – the concept that all websites and data on the Internet be treated equally.

After TRAI suspended Free Basics in August and announced it would be reviewing the legality of zero rating services, Zuckerberg wrote an opinion article in the Times of India that touted the service as a helpful solution to India’s meager Internet penetration – only 15 percent of the population has access – that would help close the digital gap between rich and poor.

Ironically, Facebook’s Internet.org was launched a year back in India, which was later named Free Basics.

India’s telecom regulator has prohibited differential pricing of data.

They say that because Free Basics only allows access to selected websites, albeit free, it violates the principle that the entire Internet should be available to everyone on equal terms.

Opponents of the service said they would continue to fight.

Facebook’s stalking policy for non-users is also under fire, as the company now attaches cookies to the browsers of anyone who visits a public Facebook page or private site with comments enabled by Facebook.

Mumbai: Facebook Inc’s plans for expansion in India have suffered a major setback.

Facebook could also challenge the ruling in the courts, but a more likely move, said Marc Einstein, Asia-Pacific director at Frost and Sullivan, would be to sit down with the Trai “to try to come up with a solution that’s deemed a little more neutral”. “To give more people access to the Internet, it is useful to offer some services for free”.

Everyone in the world should have access to the internet. The law, passed in 2012, bans telecom operators from charging extra for select services or block select services.

Regional telecoms operators which partner with Facebook, such as Indonesia’s PT Indosat, controlled by Qatar’s Ooredoo, and Globe Telecom in the Philippines, said the ruling would not lead them to reconsider the partnerships.