The entire song and dance around Facebook’s Free Basics has finally come to an end as the company officially announced its end in India today.
“Free Basics is no longer available to people in India,” explicitly states the emailed statement.
The entire issue has attracted immense attention the last couple of weeks, both from media and the average user alike. While people ‘voiced their opinion’ on Facebook, rest of social media went crazy trying to attention to the fact that the campaign was in direct contradiction of net neutrality. It was finally on the 8th of February that TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) announced its final [...]Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has spelled doom for Facebook’s Free Basics campaign by banning it from India. So much for all the voiced opinions in the last couple of weeks.
Though this is big setback for Internet.org, Mark Zuckerberg refuses to let it douse his spirits. In a post he put up earlier today, he says,
“Our work with Internet.org around the world has already improved many people’s lives. More than 19 million people in 38 countries have been connected through our different programs. Connecting India is an important goal we won’t give up on, because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the [...]
The Telecom Regulatory Athority of India (TRAI), today has announced final guidelines on differential pricing. Ruling heavily in favour of Net Neutrality, TRAI has said, ” No service provider shall offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content”
The telecom sector regulator with this ruling has barred differential pricing of data products, which effectively will mean that controversial zero-rating ideas such as Facebook’s Free Basics won’t be allowed to kick-off in the country.
TRAI also looks increasingly likely to disallow subsidised data packages already on offer which allow services, such as Whatsapp or [...]
In what will come as welcome news to millions of netizens across the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) in its latest communication to Facebook, has in rather stern words intimated to the company that it does not approve of the manner in which Facebook is misrepresenting the results of its ‘support Free Basics’ campaign, and what it seems to be suggesting is a subtle attempt at nudging the voice of the people out of the decision-making equation.
This letter from the desk of TRAI’s joint advisor K.V Sebastian, pulls up Facebook for the way it has conducted itself through the campaign to save Free Basics from being shut down. TRAI has [...]
Last year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) raised the issue of net neutrality and, needless to say, it sparked off a major debate. This eventually led TRAI to invite public comments on the differential pricing of net services and the last date to submit counter-comments was 14th January.
Of the total 24 million applications submitted over TRAI’s paper on the differential pricing of data, a significant aspect of net neutrality, there were only 21 counter-comments submitted by individuals or organisations.
List of telecom operators that countered the proposal of keeping net services neutral of discriminatory pricing include Airtel, Vodafone, Idea [...]
Internet.org was announced globally in August, 2013 and it arrived in India in February 2015. The initiative aims to provide free internet services on the Reliance network in the states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Telangana. The users would have free data access to more than three dozen services.
The idea of thousands and millions being included within the ambit of the virtual world sounds brilliant and one everyone is up for. But before that, those endorsing this initiative need to understand all that it entails.
Internet.org:
Internet.org refers to a collaboration between Facebook and six other companies, namely, Samsung, [...]
