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A fierce controversy has been raging in the Indian media through newspaper articles, letters to editors and on TV channels about Free Basics, an Internet service that Facebook is seeking to promote in India. Mark Zuckerberg visited India to promote it. India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, visited Zuckerberg in his Silicon Valley office during his visit to the USA in 2014. Facebook first offered the "free" Internet service in India in 2014 through two Indian mobile telephone companies, Reliance Communication and Airtel, under the brand internet.org. A number of activists, mostly left-leaning, America- and World Bank-bashing, anti-globalisation ideologues, characterised internet.org as an anti-net neutrality, vicious service offering that would adversely affect innovation, start-up companies and would ultimately drive many Indian Internet service providers (ISPs) out of business. Critics assert that internet.org (or Free Basics as it is now branded) involves differential pricing among subscriber/users and for different data downloaded and so, works against net neutrality.
The Minister for Telecommunications had to respond to the denunciations by Facebook's critics and assert that "net neutrality" would not be allowed to be undermined by any service provider. The sector regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), issued a Consultative Paper to get the public's views on "differential pricing" of Internet services, implying that such pricing might indeed affect the much priced and praised concept of net neutrality. The TRAI directed the telcos who were offering internet.org to suspend the service until the conclusion of the consultation process, and following TRAI's recommendations and the government's decision. In response, Facebook launched an advertisement blitz in several newspapers for weeks answering the critiques and asserting that the free Internet access and free data acquisition it offers through Free Basics will help millions of less well-off Indians to benefit from the wealth of information available from the websites to which it gives free access.
The defence of Free Basics and the exposure of the imprecision and seductiveness of...