
Facebook submits to the TRAI supporting differential pricing of data [pdf] - scorpion032
http://trai.gov.in/Comments_Data/Organisation/Facebook.pdf
======
jace
It's remarkable that a company that stands strongly in favour of net
neutrality in the US is so strongly against it in India. Speak of double
standards.

So strong against it, they've spent $44 million in ads to tell the public to
oppose net neutrality and instead support something they're calling "digital
equality", aka free Facebook (and friends) without data charges.

Source for $44 million figure:
[https://twitter.com/raju/status/686000321965985793](https://twitter.com/raju/status/686000321965985793)

~~~
rubberstamp
I fail to understand how its digital equality. I don't wanna give them control
over Internet too. Hope trai shows them the door

~~~
rohmish
The people who run the regulatory body, they will pass this with quite a
strong majority

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scorpion032
Would Facebook exist today, if there were a gatekeeper (AOL, Google, Yahoo?)
that needed to approve it as a "Basic service", that had exclusive access to a
billion users?

This Anti-competitive practice is as notorious as the ones MSFT once engaged
in at their peak, for which they still get a lot of negative press, decades
later.

~~~
onewaystreet
Facebook would only be a gatekeeper in India if no one else decides to offer a
competing service. Google plans to.

~~~
scorpion032
If I am a startup, I should request Facebook and Google to consider my portal
as a basic service and allow millions to use it for free and they know of all
my traffic all the time.

That's not the internet I know and wouldn't serve anything but the self
serving interests of these conglomerates.

------
chdir
And they are tricking their users into gathering support for their sinister
plans:

"Facebook launched a print and digital media campaign [...] asking users to
give a missed call, automatically sending a message to the regulator in
support of Free Basics."

i.e. A lot of those who gave a missed call ended up sending a message to TRAI,
likely without their knowledge.

Source : [http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/start-
up-...](http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/start-up-india-
turns-the-heat-on-facebook-free-basics-115122300056_1.html)

------
bugger_guy
did they do that? but how can they. didnt they say to FCC that such practices
are against NN and how can they say this in INDIA. isnt it hypocrisy?

~~~
gcr
The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction in India. Super simple. Facebook, or other
foreign capitalistic entities, can do basically whatever they want.

This could change when:

\- The country puts more regulations on Internet service providers like the
FCC does here (maybe this is happening? maybe this isn't? I'm not familiar
with India ISP regulation entities), or

\- The people say "No" and choose not to use this service. But that would mean
saying "No" to free Internet access. Your boss and your spouse are on
Facebook, why wouldn't you want to be? Or

\- The politicians say "No" to foreign capitalistic companies. We see
something like this in the EU (see their privacy laws and recent government
draft legislation about keeping personally identifiable data about Europeans
on European servers), and we also saw something like this in China, where the
government effectively gets control of who to blacklist via the firewall and
censorship policies. And we all know how popular those are.

Looks like there aren't many good solutions here.

~~~
gcr
What I'm curious is: how many Americans recognize this hypocrisy and take
action (e.g. stop using Facebook or campaign against it?)

After all, we have the oversight of the FCC to prevent this from happening
here (at least to some degree).

~~~
allengeorge
India is far away - why should I care what happens there?

Facetiousness aside, I suspect the statement above answers your question. As
far as the average citizen is concerned it's "not my problem" (and honestly,
they probably have more immediate problems with obvious impact).

Besides, net neutrality doesn't have the same emotional imagery or appeal as
sweatshop labor or species extinction, though its long-term impact (deciding
who gets to see what) has severe consequences for societal health.

------
jlaprise
It's much easier to persuade people with Internet access that net neutrality
is good than those without access for whom it's mostly meaningless. Indian
Internet penetration ~20% with 1B offline. Reverse those figures and consider
how easy the argument and powerful the voice for net neutrality. The long
view: strategy, not tactics.

As for monopoly fears, well, remember MySpace and AOL? Internet monopolies
have so far not been very durable. Technology changes rapidly and
organizations frequently can't keep up (remember Bill Gates's infamous
Internet letter?). I'd add that Facebook currently has ~1.5B users globally.
Can they keep up structurally by adding another 1B? That's an open question.

------
tobz
I just don't get this. Maybe I haven't read deeply enough, but...

\- what is preventing the companies signed on to the Free Basics platform from
being accessible in India? is it technical? political?

\- what does Free Basics actually provide if not financial support to end
users or carriers for now letting people access these sites?

On its face, it looks as is Free Basics is some sort of strong arm technique
to get carriers to allow access to particular sites (but are those site
actually blocked?) so that Facebook can reap the karma of being the one to
spearhead such a change.

~~~
rubberstamp
free basics is a relaunched facebook service which was initially named
internet.org

Sites which wants to be part of free basics will have to get facebooks
approval, there by making facebook the gatekeeper.

Those sites which get approved can be accessed through free basics, and will
have all the traffic go through facebook(lovely, isn't it?). Also the traffic
is insecure.

------
known
It's illegal as per
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India)

------
dangerpowpow
just waiting for facebook stocks to crash

~~~
jace
Wall Street certainly has their hopes up:

[http://www.nasdaq.com/article/facebooks-fb-free-basics-
drive...](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/facebooks-fb-free-basics-drive-gains-
support-in-india-cm563925)

[http://www.thestreet.com/story/13419399/1/will-facebook-
fb-s...](http://www.thestreet.com/story/13419399/1/will-facebook-fb-stock-get-
a-lift-from-receiving-support-for-free-web-in-india.html)

Both articles fail to consider that the mood around Facebook in India is
extremely negative, with widespread sentiment of them being a bully that
doesn't mind destroying net neutrality for their own selfish goals.

------
enig_matic7
Does anyone know what's in it for Reliance when they offer Free Basics?

~~~
scorpion032
Reliance anyway would have had to pay for marketing, and Facebook provides
them that.

So they divert their marketing budget to provide some free data to users as
free basics.

It's effectively bartering marketing and data costs. Stakes for Facebook in it
are high, so I wouldn't be surprised if they even paid for all of the data of
the users.

