While the hue and cry over Airtel’s controversial ‘Airtel Zero’ was justified, we need to be reminded that there are several other players in the market working on a similar plan.
Here’s why we had a problem with Airtel Zero – it was a new platform that let companies buy data to offer their apps to consumers for free. It allowed users to access these apps without incurring data charges. This was seen as a direct violation of net neutrality as it gave priority access to some apps over others.
Now let’s have a look at Reliance’s ‘Freenet’ service. Freenet is a service jointly launched by Reliance and Facebook in India, which hosts around 20 popular websites, (including AajTak, Facebook, Wikipedia etc) free of charge for Reliance customers.
Notice a difference between the two services? We couldn’t find one either. Check out the ad here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT3-9odXdUg&feature=youtu.be
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