The Centre for Internet and Society
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Internet Freedom
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom
<b>The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda was published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.asianage.com/editorial/internet-freedom-555">Asian Age</a> on February 14, 2016.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What would have gone wrong if India’s telecom regulator Trai had decided to support programmes like Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel’s Zero Rating instead of issuing the regulation that prohibits discriminatory tariffs? Here are possible scenarios to look at in case the discriminatory tarrifs were allowed as they are in some countries.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Possible impact on elections</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook would have continued to amass its product — eyeballs. Indian eyeballs would be more valuable than others for three reasons 1. Facebook would have an additional layer of surveillance thanks to the Free Basics proxy server which stores the time, the site url and data transferred for all the other destinations featured in the walled garden 2. As part of Digital India, most government entities will set up Facebook pages and a majority of the interaction with citizens would happen on the social media rather than the websites of government entities and, consequently, Facebook would know what is and what is not working in governance 3. Given the financial disincentive to leave the walled garden, the surveillance would be total.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What would this mean for democracies? Eight years ago, Facebook began to engineer the News Feed to show more posts of a user’s friends voting in order to influence voting behavior. It introduced the “I’m Voting” button into 61 million users’ feeds during the 2010 US presidential elections to increase voter turnout and found that this kind of social pressure caused people to vote. Facebook has also admitted to populating feeds with posts from friends with similar political views. During the 2012 Presidential elections, Facebook was able to increase voter turnout by altering 1.9 million news feeds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian eyeballs may not be that lucrative in terms of advertising. But these users are extremely valuable to political parties and others interested in influencing elections. Facebook’s notifications to users when their friends signed on to the “Support Free Basics” campaign was configured so that you were informed more often than with other campaigns. In other words, Facebook is not just another player on their platform. Given that margins are often slim, would Facebook be tempted to try and install a government of its choice in India during the 2019 general elections?</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">In times of disasters</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most people defending Free Basics and defending forbearance as the regulatory response in 2015/16 make the argument that “95 per cent of Internet users in developing countries spend 95 per cent of their time on Facebook”.<br /><br />This is not too far from the truth as LirneAsia demonstrated in 2012 with most people using Facebook in Indonesia not even knowing they were using the internet. In other words, they argue that regulators should ignore the fringe user and fringe usage and only focus on the mainstream. The cognitive bias they are appealing to is smaller numbers are less important.<br /><br />Since all the sublime analogies in the Net Neutrality debate have been taken, forgive us for using the scatological. That is the same as arguing that since we spend only 5% of our day in toilets, only 5% of our home’s real estate should be devoted to them.<br /><br />Everyone agrees that it is far easier to live in a house without a bedroom than a house without a toilet. Even extremely low probabilities or ‘Black Swan’ events can be terribly important! Imagine you are an Indian at the bottom of the pyramid. You cannot afford to pay for data on your phone and, as a result, you rarely and nervously stray out of the walled garden of Free Basics.<br /><br />During a natural disaster you are able to use the Facebook Safety Check feature to mark yourself safe but the volunteers who are organising both offline and online rescue efforts are using a wider variety of platforms, tools and technologies.<br /><br />Since you are unfamiliar with the rest of the Internet, you are ill equipped when you try to organise a rescue for you and your loved ones.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Content and carriage converge</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some people argue that TRAI should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only 9% market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.<br /><br />Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”<br /><br />What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market? At the Centre for Internet and Society (CI S), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.<br /><br />Was an absolute prohibition the best response for TRAI? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies - the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, TRAI has over regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as TRAI argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.<br /><br />However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.<br /><br />This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.<br /><br />This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">What is Net neutrality?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to this principle, all service providers and governments should not discriminate between various data on the internet and consider all as one. They cannot give preference to one set of apps/ websites while restricting others.</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><b>2006</b>: TRAI invites opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from various telecom industry bodies and stakeholders<b>Feb. 2012</b>: Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, suggests services like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, saying that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should be a tax on the highway</li>
<li><b>July 2012</b>: Bharti Airtel’s Jagbir Singh suggests large Internet companies like Facebook and Google should share revenues with telecom companies.</li>
<li><b>August 2012</b>: Data from M-Lab said You Broadband, Airtel, BSNL were throttling traffic of P2P services like BitTorrent</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2013</b>: Killi Kiruparani, Minister for state for communications and technology says government will look into legality of VoIP services like Skype</li>
<li><b>June 2013</b>: Airtel starts offering select Google services to cellular broadband users for free, fixing a ceiling of 1GB on the data</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2014</b>: Airtel operations CEO Gopal Vittal says companies offering free messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp should be regulated</li>
<li><b>August 2014</b>: TRAI rejects proposal from telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers/government</li>
<li><b>Nov. 2014</b>: Trai begins investigation on Airtel implementing preferential access with special packs for WhatsApp and Facebook at rates lower than standard data rates</li>
<li><b>Dec. 2014</b>: Airtel launches 2G, 3G data packs with VoIP data excluded in the pack, later launches VoIP pack.</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2015</b>: Facebook launches Internet.org with Reliance communications, aiming to provide free access to 38 websites through single app</li>
<li><b>March 2015</b>: Trai publishes consultation paper on regulatory framework for over the top services, explaining what net neutrality in India will mean and its impact, invited public feedback</li>
<li><b>April 2015</b>: Airtel launches Airtel Zero, a scheme where apps sign up with airtle to get their content displayed free across the network. Flipkart, which was in talks for the scheme, had to pull out after users started giving it poor rating after hearing about the news</li>
<li><b>April 2015</b>: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and information technology minister announces formation of a committee to study net neutrality issues in the country</li>
<li><b>23 April 2015</b>: Many organisations under Free Software Movement of India protested in various parts of the country. In a counter measure, Cellular Operators Association of India launches campaign , saying its aim is to connect the unconnected citizens, demanding VoIP apps be treated as cellular operators</li>
<li><b>27 April 2015</b>: Trai releases names and email addresses of users who responded to the consultation paper in millions. Anonymous India group, take down Trai’s website in retaliation, which the government could not confirm</li>
<li><b>Sept. 2015</b>: Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics, launches in the country with massive ads across major newspapers in the country. Faces huge backlash from public</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2016:</b> Trai rules in favour of net neutrality, barring telecom operators from charging different rates for data services.</li>
</ul>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The writers work at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom</a>
</p>
No publisherSunil Abraham and Vidushi MardaSocial MediaFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:51:10ZBlog EntryZuckerberg's Plan Spurned as India Backs Full Net Neutrality
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality
<b>Facebook Inc.’s plans for expansion in India have suffered a major setback.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Srivastava was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/facebook-faces-setback-as-india-bans-differential-data-pricing">Bloomberg</a> on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Telecom regulator bans differential Internet data plans</li>
<li>Facebook had lobbied India to approve its Free Basics plan</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the company spent months lobbying the country to accept its Free Basics service -- a way of delivering a limited Internet that included Facebook, plus some other tools, for no cost -- India’s telecom regulator ruled against any plans from cellular operators that charge different rates to different parts of the Web.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Telecom operators can’t offer discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, and aren’t allowed to enter into agreements with Internet companies to subsidize access to some websites, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf" target="_blank" title="Link to website">said</a> in a statement Monday. Companies violating the rules will be fined, it said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“This is the most extensive and stringent regulation on differential pricing anywhere in the world,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said via phone. “Those who suggested regulation in place of complete ban have clearly lost.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With this decision, India joins countries such as the U.S., Brazil and the Netherlands in passing laws that restrict telecom operators from discriminating Internet traffic based on content. It is a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/india-facebook-s-fight-to-be-free" title="Facebook’s Fight to Be Free">big blow</a> to Facebook’s Internet sampler plan known as Free Basics, which is currently offered in about <a href="https://info.internet.org/en/story/where-weve-launched/" target="_blank" title="Link to Internet.org page">three dozen</a> countries including Kenya and Zambia, none of which come close to the scale or reach that could’ve been achieved in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With 130 million Facebook users, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t, India is the biggest growth market for the social network, which remains blocked in China.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook said in a statement that it’s “disappointed with the outcome.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the decision won’t cause Facebook to give up on connecting people to the Internet in India, “because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the Internet.” The company will continue to focus on its other initiatives, like extending networks using satellites, drones and lasers.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Freebies Curtailed</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The rule will put an end to prepaid plans that offered free access to services such as Google searches, the WhatsApp messaging application and Facebook. These packages were popular with low-income users by giving them an incentive to get online, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“These types of plans were being used by operators to meet the policy goals of connecting one billion people,” Matthews said. “With these gone, the government needs to tell us what alternatives are there.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator’s decision comes after months of public <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-28/zuckerberg-makes-personal-appeal-in-india-for-free-net-service" title="Zuckerberg Makes Personal Appeal for Free Internet in India (1)">lobbying by Facebook</a> for India to approve Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics was criticized by activists who said it threatened net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible, and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator, which had sought stakeholders’ views, said it was seeking to ensure data tariffs remain content agnostic. Operators will have six months to wind down existing differential pricing services.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Google Unaffected</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Anything on the Internet can’t be priced based on content, applications, source and destination,” R.S. Sharma, the regulator’s chairman, told reporters in New Delhi. Some Internet companies’ plans to offer free WiFi at public venues, like Google Inc.’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/data-too-dear-set-youtube-to-download-in-india-while-you-sleep" title="Data Too Dear? Set YouTube to Download in India While You Sleep">project</a> with Indian Railways, are not affected by this ruling, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For Free Basics, one or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans. In India, Facebook had tied up with Reliance Communications Ltd., though the service was suspended in December as the government solicited comments from proponents and opponents.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook bought daily full-page <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/india-facebook-s-fight-to-be-free" title="Facebook’s Fight to Be Free">ads</a> in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-eds, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Entrepreneurs, business people and activists took to Twitter to share their views after the decision came out on Monday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Great to see TRAI backing <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash" target="_blank" title="Click to view webpage.">#</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash" target="_blank" title="Click to view webpage.">NetNeutrality</a>,” Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal.com, one of India’s biggest e-commerce sites, said. “Let’s keep the Internet free and independent.”</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFacebookInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:18:54ZNews ItemTrai upholds Net Neutrality in setback to Facebook’s Free Basics
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-february-9-2016-shauvik-ghosh-moulishree-srivastava-trai-upholds-net-neutrality-in-setback-to-facebooks-free-basics
<b>Trai says Internet service providers will not be allowed to discriminate on pricing of data access for different web services. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Moulishree Srivastava and Shauvik Ghosh was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/Politics/duz0hEe6YotL5t8oLKjiOM/Trai-bars-companies-from-charging-or-offering-data-traffic-o.html">published in Livemint </a>on February 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s telecom regulator has barred Internet service providers from offering customers preferential tariffs to access certain content over concerns that it will violate Net neutrality norms, dealing a blow to Facebook Inc.’s free data service plan.<br /><br />Internet service providers, including telecom operators, are prohibited from offering discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said on Monday. Service providers that violate these rules will be fined Rs.50,000 per day to a maximum of Rs.50 lakh. Trai said it may review the rules after two years.<br /><br />The decision ends a long battle between Facebook and the country’s telecom operators, including Bharti Airtel Ltd, on one side and Net neutrality activists on the other. Facebook had launched an intense lobbying effort that included full-page advertisements in newspapers and an Internet campaign to assure people that its Free Basics plan, which allows access to its social network and some other websites without a data plan, would benefit millions of poor Indians.<br /><br />“BJP wholeheartedly welcomes the Trai decision on differential pricing. The decision is a clear expression of popular will,” said telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday. “The government made sure proper processes were followed at all levels which eventually led to the victory of an open and equal Internet... It is gladdening to see that the NDA government ensured unparalleled transparency in the entire issue of net neutrality,” he added.<br /><br />Net neutrality requires Internet service providers not to discriminate on online data by user, content, site, platform, application, mode of communication or price.<br /><br />“The net neutrality activists... have got exactly what they wanted—the complete prohibition of the differential pricing,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bengaluru-based research organization Centre for Internet and Society. “Before Facebook started with its aggressive and outrageous campaign to promote Free Basics, the Net neutrality debate was a peaceful discussion. The way it has behaved must have led the regulator to lose trust that big companies can self-regulate.”<br /><br />It, however, remains to be seen whether telcos challenge the regulation in court, he added.<br /><br />“This has been a litigious issue and a lot of money is at stake so quite likely, I think, they will go to court,” said Apar Gupta, a lawyer and part of Save The Internet campaign.<br /><br />The basic rationale behind the regulation is that the network that carries the data should be agnostic to data packets, R.S. Sharma, chairman of Trai, told reporters.<br /><br />“Anything on the Internet cannot be priced discriminately based on source, destination, content and applications,” he said.<br /><br />A spokesperson for Facebook said the company will carefully study what the regulator has said and comment accordingly.<br /><br />Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications Ltd (Facebook partnered with R-Com in India) declined to comment.<br /><br />Differential pricing based on the network speed, Sharma said, is a larger issue and so is Net neutrality.<br /><br />“We have used the term discriminatory pricing in place of differential pricing, because differential pricing in the consultation paper had a particular context. Differential word was quite contextual in the regulation, but it was misunderstood in a very larger context. Therefore, to differentiate, we are calling it discriminatory,” he said.<br /><br />However, Sharma said that the Net neutrality debate is not over.<br /><br />“Net neutrality is a larger question, and we have not gone into that question, though, I must admit, differential pricing is looking at Net neutrality from a tariff perspective. Net neutrality has a number of other components which is fast lane, throttling and differentially treating the packet in terms of speed etc. So this is not a part of this regulation,” Sharma said.<br /><br />Amresh Nandan, research director at Gartner in India, said the Trai order favouring Net neutrality is in line with rules in the US. “The European Union has also ruled in favour of treating all Internet traffic equally,” Nandan said.<br /><br />Nandan said the proponents of Net neutrality all over the world have been highlighting the importance of democratic values of the Internet and even a marginal attempt to curb it can possibly trigger all kinds of differentiation.<br /><br />All the major telcos in India have, however, been lobbying the regulator to allow differential-pricing plans for data services. The telcos said such tariffs will increase Internet penetration in the country, benefiting consumers in the long run. They further argued that the existing legal framework is sufficient for regulating and monitoring differential pricing measures provided by the service providers and that Trai can deal with any issue regarding anti-competitive practices on a case-by-case basis as and when they arise.<br /><br />Activists say such a practice will undermine competition and create monopolies. Differential pricing, they said, will allow big companies to buy favoured treatment from carriers.<br /><br />Telecom operators said they were disappointed with the ruling. “Differential pricing could be useful in connecting the unconnected in India. This is an upfront disbarment,” said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, the lobby group that represent some of the major telcos. “We believe that it was an appropriate tool to allow consumers who have never been on the Internet, to enjoy getting accustomed to it without getting sticker shock.”<br /><br />Hemant Joshi, a partner at Deloitte Haskins and Sells Llp, said differential pricing was a well-accepted principle across industries.<br /><br />“The concept inherently recognizes the economic principle of paying differently for different levels of service and experience. In telecom, there are virtual highways that need to follow the same principle. More awareness and education is needed around the economics of differential pricing and its long-term implications on the Industry and the consumer,” he added.<br /><br />Trai, which put up the consultation paper on differential pricing on 9 December, asked four specific questions, broadly on whether telecom operators should be allowed to offer different services at different price points and models that can be implemented to achieve this.<br /><br />Trai extended the deadline for comments and counter-comments on its consultation paper to 7 January and 14 January from 31 December and 7 January, respectively. For the consultation process, Trai said that majority of the individual comments received did not address the specific questions that were raised in the consultation paper.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>P.R. Sanjai and Ashish K. Mishra in Mumbai contributed to this story. </i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-february-9-2016-shauvik-ghosh-moulishree-srivastava-trai-upholds-net-neutrality-in-setback-to-facebooks-free-basics'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-february-9-2016-shauvik-ghosh-moulishree-srivastava-trai-upholds-net-neutrality-in-setback-to-facebooks-free-basics</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:01:37ZNews ItemThere is No Such Thing as Free Basics
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bangalore-mirror-subhashish-panigrahi-february-9-2016-there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-basics
<b>India would not see the rain of Free Basics advertisements on billboards with images of farmers and common people explaining how much they could benefit from this Firefox project. Because the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken a historical step by banning the differential pricing without discriminating services.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bangaloremirror.com/news/india/There-is-No-such-thing-as-Free-basics/articleshow/50908289.cms">Bangalore Mirror</a> on February 9, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In their notes, TRAI has explained, "In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the Internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users' Internet experience." Not just that, violation of this ban would cost Rs 50,000 every day.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook's earlier plan was to launch Free Basics in India by making a few websites—that are mostly partners with Facebook—available for free. The company not just advertised heavily on billboards and commercials across the nation, it also embedded a campaign inside Facebook asking users to vote in support of Free Basics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">TRAI criticised Facebook's attempt for such a manipulative public provocation. However, Facebook was heavily criticised by many policy and Internet advocates, including non-profits groups like Free Software Movement of India and Savetheinternet.in campaign.<br /><br />The latter two collectives were strongly discouraging Free Basics by bringing public opinion wherein Savetheinternet.org was used to send over 10 lakh emails to TRAI to disallow Free Basics.<br /><br />Furthermore 500 start ups including major ones like Cleartrip, Zomato, Practo, Paytm and Cleartax also wrote to prime minister Narendra Modi requesting continued support for Net Neutrality — a concept that advocates equal treating of websites — on the Republic Day.<br /><br />Stand-up comedy groups like AIB and East India Comedy had created humorous but informative videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality which went viral.<br /><br />Technology critic and Quartz writer Alice Truong reacted saying: "Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn't apply to India because having some service is better than no service."<br /><br />In the light of differential pricing, news portal Medianama's founder Nikhil Pawa, in his opinion piece in Times of India, emphasised the way Aircel in India, Grameenphone in Bangladesh and Orange in Africa were providing free access to Internet with a sole motif of access to Internet, and criticised the walled Internet of Facebook that confines users inside Facebook only.<br /><br />Had the differential pricing been allowed, it would have affected start ups and content-based smaller companies adversely, as they could never have managed to pay the high price to a partner service provider to make their service available for free.<br /><br />On the other hand, tech-giants like Facebook could have easily managed to capture the entire market. Since the inception of the Facebook-run non-profit Internet.org has run into a lot of controversies because of the hidden motive behind the claimed support for social cause.<br /><br />The decision by the government has been welcomed largely in the country and outside.<br /><br />In support of the move, Web We Want programme manager at the World Wide Web Foundation, Renata Avila, has shared saying,<br /><br />"As the country with the second largest number of Internet users worldwide, this decision will resonate around the world.<br /><br />"It follows a precedent set by Chile, the United States, and others which have adopted similar net neutrality safeguards. The message is clear: We can't create a two-tier Internet — one for the haves, and one for the have-nots. We must connect everyone to the full potential of the open Web."</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bangalore-mirror-subhashish-panigrahi-february-9-2016-there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-basics'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bangalore-mirror-subhashish-panigrahi-february-9-2016-there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-basics</a>
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No publishersubhaFree BasicsTRAIFacebookInternet Governance2016-02-14T11:37:50ZBlog EntryA Megacorp’s Basic Instinct
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct
<b>Bolstered by academia and civil society, TRAI stands its ground against FB’s Free Basics publicity blitz.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Arindam Mukherjee was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.outlookindia.com/article/a-megacorps-basic-instinct/296510">published in Outlook</a> on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hours before the January 31 deadline for telecom regulator TRAI to give its opinion on Facebook’s controversial and expensive Free Basics pitch—which seeks to give India’s poor “free” access to certain partner websites—the consensus seems to be building up against the social media giant. “If there is cannibalising of the internet through services like Free Basics, the internet will be split; it will parcel out and slice the internet. Its future is at stake,” says a senior government official on condition of anonymity.<br /><br />In a climate where the tech-savvy Modi government is seen to be close to the online trinity of Facebook, Google and Twitter, TRAI’s defiant stance in favour of net neutrality stands out. There’s a lot at stake. India’s position becomes crucial as few countries in the world have clearly defined laws on net neutrality or have taken a stand on it. For Facebook, there’s a lot more at stake. India is its second-largest user base after the US (it is banned in China), so it is leaving no stone unturned. The massive Rs 300-crore electronic and print media campaign is an indication of that.<br /><br />TRAI sources say they are ready for any adverse onslaught and they are under no pressure from the PMO. The view gaining ground in government is that FB is trying to create a walled garden where it controls what people see and surf and what they can access online. While this will be offered to consumers for free—the technical term is differential pricing—the websites part of Free Basics will have to pay for being on the platform. Outlook’s queries to FB remained unanswered at the time of going to press.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At an ‘open house’ meeting to discuss TRAI’s consultation paper on differential pricing last week, regulator Ram Sevak Sharma stood firm against the barrage of pro-Free Basics opinions that flowed from FB, telecom operators and some members of the public. TRAI’s message was clear: FB’s tactics of moulding public opinion by stealth will not be acceptable in India. In the past few weeks, there have been bitter exchanges between TRAI and FB over the latter’s responses to a consultation paper on differential pricing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">TRAI’s defiant stand draws from an unprecedented show of strength by civil society against Free Basics and FB’s intentions. Says former Aadhar man Nandan Nilekani, “Free Basics is certainly against net neutrality. How can a solution be neutral, if it disproportionately benefits a particular website or business on the internet? Today, 400 million Indians are online. They came online because of the inherent value the internet offers. How can a walled garden of 100-odd websites provide the same value?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What does Free Basics mean for PM Modi’s Digital India campaign? Being a walled garden, thousands of start-ups without adequate budgets to pay for such dedicated service will be forced to stay out of it. Similar questions are being raised about government services that are increasingly coming online. The concern is that all government traffic will have to pass through FB servers. The senior government official quoted above agrees, “In such a scenario, the government will have to approach FB to make its websites accessible on the free service which is neither desirable nor safe.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The other fear is what happens to public data if it goes through a service like Free Basics. There is fear that a lot of government and public data will be put through Free Basics once government services start coming online. If Free Basics is for the poor who are also beneficiaries of government services, FB too can access this data. Says Prabir Purkayastha, chairman, Knowledge Commons, “FB says public service will be available through Free Basics but can public service be given through a private initiative? Public data is valuable and can’t be handed over to a private company.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Few again are convinced by FB’s claim that Free Basics aims to make the internet accessible to the poor, with the many services offered through it. “The claim that the poor will get access to the internet is false,” warns Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. “Free Basics gives access to less than 100 of the one billion plus websites on the world wide web. Those in the walled garden will be treated quite differently.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What gives TRAI a shot in the arm is that, for the first time, academia has put its weight behind Free Basics opponents. In a signed statement, several IIT and IISc Bangalore professors have said that Free Basics won’t serve the purpose FB is proposing and is not good for the country. “The problem is the internet being provided (via Free Basics) is a shrunken and sanitised version of the real thing. Free Basics is not a good proposal for the long-term development of a healthy and democratic internet setup in India,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT Delhi professor and one of the signatories to the memo.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course, many of the experts <i>Outlook</i> spoke to say that the government, and not FB, should be responsible for providing free internet to the people. Says Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director, IT for Change, “The government is sitting on Rs 40,000 crore of USO funds. It can surely utilise that to provide a free basic data package to people in India. Basic government services and emergency services should essentially be free.” Nilekani is also in favour of the government providing free internet to people. “The internet is a powerful poverty alleviation tool.... Government can do a direct benefit transfer for data, a more market-neutral way of achieving the goal of getting everyone on the internet,” he told <i>Outlook</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Legally, though, there may be issues in stopping FB from introducing its Free Basics platform in India. Says Singh, “Technically, the Indian government may not be able to stop FB from introducing Free Basics in India as it is just a platform. What the government has to do is to stop telcos from collaborating with it for free internet because Indian telcos, not FB, mediate access to the internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The demand for the government and TRAI to come clean on net neutrality has reached fever pitch. Experts like Nilekani feel that net neutrality, which does not allow zero rating and differential pricing based on telcos looking at the contents of the subscriber’s data packets, should be enshrined in law through an act of Parliament, the way countries like the US have done. TRAI has also proposed two models where the internet is provided free initially and charged at a later stage and another where content providers and websites reimburse the cost of browsing directly to consumers. Both these proposals have not found favour with experts who say that these are unworkable and only the government should disburse free internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In any case, all this is a matter of detail—important, no doubt. The key question is, what happens to Free Basics if TRAI rules in favour of net neutrality and goes against FB? “This is going to be a long-drawn-out battle as FB will certainly challenge this in court,” says the government official. After spending Rs 300 crore on publicity, there is no way it will roll over and die.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaTelecomFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2016-02-04T13:53:05ZNews ItemTrai promises final call on differential pricing by month-end after 'lively' open house
https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/trai-promises-final-call-on-differential-pricing-by-month-end-after-lively-open-house
<b>The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will take a final call on differential pricing by the end of January , its chairman said, describing the open house discussions on the regulator's contentious consultation paper as "lively".</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <a class="external-link" href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/trai-promises-final-call-on-differential-pricing-by-month-end-after-lively-open-house/articleshow/50675121.cms">article by Economic Times</a> was published on January 22, 2016. CIS gave inputs.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It was a very lively consultation, the hall was full. We will take all these into account and hope that by the end of the month, we should be able to come out with our position," Trai chairman Ram Sewak Sharma said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Companies.png" alt="Companies" class="image-inline" title="Companies" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He, however, refused to link this consultation paper to the broader topic of net neutrality . "Net neutrality is a different subject. First we will decide differential pricing, then we will look at other issues. I cannot say at this time what Trai will do on the larger issue of net neutrality , but we will certainly take a call," Sharma said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The open house saw a near packed house, with representatives from Trai, several telecom companies, civil society organisations, industry bodies, and individuals, but the debate did not turn out to be as explosive as the acrimonious lead-up to it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook India's policy head Ankhi Das, whose presence was hugely anticipated after a recent round of high octave communication between Trai and Facebook was made public, did not turn up.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A representative of Facebook, whose zero-rated programme called Free Basics has been at the cent re of the controversy surrounding the differential pricing paper, said: "As a company we have commented. With Free Basics we hope to bring people online in a non-discriminatory manner... We hope Trai will encourage Free Basics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Telcos including Bharti AirtelBSE -0.37 %, Idea CellularBSE 0.05 %, Reliance CommunicationsBSE -1.58 %, Sistema Shyam, Tata Communications, VideoconBSE -0.54 % Telecom, and Vodafone made a case for allowing differential pricing, and most cited extending the practice from voice to data services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Differential pricing should be incorporated as were done in voice telephony. Data should be encouraged while the content part can be taken up in another consultation paper," a Vodafone representative said.<br /><br />The volunteer-led savetheinternet.in coalition said: "Internet is not a marketplace. Though telcos advocate differential pricing in the name of different customer classes, but when they charge for third party content, it becomes a problem."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Civil society organisations also made detailed submissions, explaining their positions. While most, including industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India, said they were against differential pricing, some took a slightly cautious view. "What hasn't been discussed is that there is already differential pricing and this is undocumented," said a representative of Centre for Internet and Society. "Free Basics isn't following certain protocol standards, and this is a concern. We don't have enough data on internet usage, costs, user experience, to take a decision now," he added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A representative of Tata CommunicationsBSE 0.58 % said "sponsored data services" exist around the world and argued citing an example that providing free voice service does not confer competitive advantage.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"If there are two pizza vendors: one with a toll-free service for taking orders and the other where you pay money to order without a toll-free service. The uptake in the pizza depends on the quality and the price of the pizzas. It is not because it is a toll free call," he said.<br /><br />This comparison drew laughter in the open house, and became the butt of jokes on Twitter from internet freedom advocates. "Btw, I think a new analogy from the telco guys today, comparing the internet with pizza. How creative," tweeted Nikhil Pahwa, who under the banner of savetheinternet.in has been campaigning for net neutrality.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">IAMAI president Subho Ray's candid commentary on submissions, calling some of them "badly done homework", did not go down well with some members of the audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Individual entrepreneurs made a case for not having differential pricing, as that would mean the telcos would get to decide the access for their business. Some people suggested alternatives. Digital Empowerment Foundation founder Osama Manzar said unlicensed spectrum or Wi-Fi could be used to provide access in the rural areas.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Trai launched the differential pricing consultation paper on December 9, which was followed by Facebook starting a mass campaign, asking its users to support Free Basics, urging them to email Trai in support of "digital equality" and supporting Free Basics.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/trai-promises-final-call-on-differential-pricing-by-month-end-after-lively-open-house'>https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/trai-promises-final-call-on-differential-pricing-by-month-end-after-lively-open-house</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFree BasicsTelecomTRAI2016-01-26T02:41:56ZNews ItemWill India win net neutrality battle?
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle
<b>There is more than what meets the eye in Facebook’s ‘noble mission’ of providing internet for all.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Pratap Vikram Singh and Taru Bhatia was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle">published by Governance Now</a> on January 5, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">India is gearing up for an era of startups and entrepreneurship and the man pushing it as one of his biggest development and self reliance agenda is none other than prime minister Narendra Modi, who launched the ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign this year. Few technology giants, led by the likes of Facebook and some telecom service providers, however, have thrown a technology spanner. It is important to note that a significant number of the startups in India are internet-based – next only to the US and China in having maximum number of tech startups, according to industry body NASSCOM.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For these to flourish and for India to have next Facebook or Google it is important to have an open and neutral internet, believe digital rights experts. A network which doesn’t discriminate between the data packets (smallest unit of information sent in binary format over a network) and provides level playing field for all. “It is critical for the Startup India campaign. If we let the principles of net neutrality be compromised, then it makes it very difficult for entrepreneurs and startups to compete against established players, who can close off the market for upstarts by schemes like differentiated pricing and zero rating (toll free access to websites or apps),” said Vishal Misra, associate professor, department of computer science, Columbia University.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">A prerequisite for startups</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A few months from now, country’s telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), is going to decide whether internet would remain neutral and whether it will continue to foster innovation. A major threat to net neutrality, according to civil society and digital rights experts, comes from zero rating – toll free access to a few selected websites or apps, a strategy adopted by internet service providers or internet platforms to hook users to those select few sites. For telecom and internet service providers zero rating is a new stream of revenue, a way to secure optimal return on investment from their existing subscriber base – without requiring additional investment. The ISPs are arguing that they should be given more flexibility in managing their network – in a way they should be allowed to assume the role of gatekeeper of the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For ISPs, net neutrality is an obsolete and utopian idea. Facebook, which has grown into a mammoth internet platform since its inception in 2004, has recently joined this bandwagon. Under its Free Basics initiative (erstwhile internet.org), the internet giant provides toll free access to a set of websites (including Facebook obviously!) handpicked by itself to the users. In India so far it has partnered with Reliance Communications.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook by far is the most audacious and aggressive proponent of ‘zero rating’ scheme. From lobbying the prime minister to giving back-to-back ads in television channels and two-page ads in national dailies to circulating a vaguely written letter in support of Free Basics on its social media site, Facebook is pitching for ‘digital equality’ by giving access to 'basic internet’ or say a slice of the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cautioning against zero rating, Prabir Purkayastha, chairperson, Society for Knowledge Commons, said the way zero-rating is being discussed, it seems Indians are only the consumers of internet, which is not true. “Indians are also the innovators on internet,” said Purkayastha. “Internet has given the innovators the right to connect to the users without having a huge amount of money. This is the character that will be destroyed if zero-rating will be implemented,” he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That’s true. Be it US-based Facebook or Google or Indian Flipkart or PayTm or SnapDeal, had it not been for open and neutral internet they wouldn’t have become what are today.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Raman Jit Singh Chima, global public policy director, Access Now, a New York-based firm working for digital rights, said the idea is to prevent a telco or an internet platform from assuming a role of a gatekeeper and control access. Misra, too, has written extensively on the counter-productiveness of zero rating: stifling of innovation and service providers loosing incentive to improve service and keep prices low. Both Misra and Chima testified their views on net neutrality to the standing committee on IT in August after the department of telecommunications submitted an expert committee report on the neutrality issue.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Whither public consultation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To formulate a regulation on how internet will shape up, the TRAI has come out with two consultation papers concerning net neutrality in the last nine months. The first consultation paper on ‘regulatory framework for over the top players (OTTs)’, which came in March, was written in favour of telecom and internet service providers. “It was embarrassing,” said Purkayastha. Over 1.2 million people wrote to the regulator. This was result of the savetheinternet.in campaign ran by free internet activists and lawyers, who were later joined by All India Bakchod (AIB) whose video on net neutrality went viral on YouTube (the video has received three million views in last eight months). This was unprecedented in the history of TRAI consultations. However, the fate of those responses is still unclear.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In December the regulator brought another paper. This time it was titled ‘regulation on differential pricing’. Contrary to the initial paper, this paper is far more objective and reasonable, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder, MediaNama portal and a key volunteer behind savetheinternet.in campaign. The regulator has sought comments on its second paper by December 30 and counter-comments by January 7. Till the time a final call is taken, the telecom regulator has instructed Reliance Communications, Facebook’s India telecom partner, to put Free Basics on hold.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The savetheinternet.in campaign has formulated the responses to the new consultation paper and has made it available for everyone favouring net neutrality to send it to the TRAI. The AIB team has released another video titled ‘Save the Internet - 2 – Judgement Day’, which has been viewed close to one million times in just four months.<br /><br />The neutrality debate started in India in December 2014 when Airtel, country’s largest telco, announced – although it later backtracked – that the company would charge consumers more for using VOIP services, on top of the data charges. Later, it went on to launch Airtel Zero, wherein it struck deal with online services providers for user access at zero rate. Facebook had already introduced internet.org by then. While it was initially led by civil society, the debate was later joined by politicians – Naveen Patnaik, M Chandrashekhar, Jay Panda, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal – who strongly came out in support of net neutrality. <br /><br />Facebook has termed its zero rating platform as a philanthropic activity intended to connect billions of unconnected population so that they can access education, health and employment related information. It has urged users to sign a petition, cautioning them against "a small, vocal group of critics" lobbying to prevent 1 billion people from accessing 'affordable internet'. Under Free Basics, Facebook claims, it doesn't charge app developers and includes them if they comply to its 'objective tech specs'.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics: A camouflage?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Critics, however, call it a walled garden. In providing free access to close to a hundred websites it continues to play the role of a gatekeeper. It is not the poor who decide what to access but Facebook! While it says that it is not making money out of Free Basics as it doesn't display ads in the Free Basics version of Facebook, it keeps the option of monetisation open in the future.<br /><br />“It [Free Basics] has been camouflaged as charity," said a senior TRAI official, in an off the record conversation. While speaking to the Guardian on Facebook’s zero rating in December, Tim Berners Lee, founder of world wide web (www), said, “In the particular case of somebody who's offering... something which is branded internet, it's not internet, then you just say no. No it isn't free, no it isn't in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something... [only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”<br /><br />Speaking in favour of zero rating, Payal Malik, associate professor, economics, Delhi University, said that it is wrong to assume that all consumers will get hooked to zero rated sites. “In a way you are saying that all humans have same preferences and likes and dislikes, which is very unlikely,” said Malik. <br /><br />Experts representing telecom industry argue that the net neutrality regulation should be geography specific and the telecom players should be given more flexibility in dealing with the network. Mahesh Uppal, a senior telecom consultant and director, ComFirst India, while speaking at a round table discussion in Delhi, said that a majority of population in the West including countries opting for strict net neutrality – including Netherlands, Slovenia and the US – are already connected. "The data connectivity is primarily through fixed lines - copper, co-ax cable or optical fibre wired — wherein it is easier to add capacity to meet traffic growth. However this is difficult to do so for wireless networks," said Uppal. In developing countries, including India, mobile telephony and internet majorly runs on wireless. Hence, he argued, telecom and internet service providers should be given flexibility to zero rate. For Uppal, if zero rating or sponsored content is implemented properly “it can be one of the ways to scale up internet access” to the unconnected regions.<br /><br />Neutrality proponents, however, differ. “It is basic economic theory, and zero rated sites get a price advantage. There are studies that show customers stay within the world of zero rated sites and never venture outside or are aware of the full internet,” professor Misra said.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Zero or equal rating?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So is there a middle ground? Are there ways to increase access without tampering with open and neutral character of the internet? Experts believe there are. Some of the solutions are not completely black and white, but in between. While there is a fierce opposition to zero rating, it might work, according to Sunil Abraham, executive director, centre for internet and society (CIS), if provided with an amount of equal rating (giving free data pack to users so that they can access any site or app they want). <br /><br />Mozilla Foundation advocates equal rating. The foundation has sought to create such an alternative in Bangladesh and countries in Africa within the Firefox OS ecosystem. The foundation has tied up with telecom operator Grameenphone in Bangladesh to provide 20 Mb data per day for free to users, in exchange for viewing an advertisement. The model could be easily replicated in India, said Pahwa of MediaNama.<br /><br />For African countries, the foundation has partnered with Orange. Both allow Africans to purchase $40 Firefox OS smartphones that come packaged with free three to six months of voice calling, text, and up to 500 Mb of monthly data. Purkayastha of Knowledge Commons said that zero-rating plan by telecom operators only makes sense when government services are provided for free through it. “That is the form of zero-rating I would support.”<br /><br />There are a few platforms which are reimbursing data in megabytes to users accessing partnering apps. The user can then use the free data pack to access any other site or app. Some of them include: mCent, Gigato and DataMi. mCent, owned by Boston-based firm Jana, is a pioneer in this area. It is being used by 30 million users cross 98 countries. In India, according to Jana, one out of every 10 internet users has subscribed to mCent. <br /><br />Yes, it does violate neutrality as it puts those app providers not having enough money at a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis to those having deep pocket to reimburse data to users. “I think it’s a grey area,” said professor Misra. On the surface it seems to be just like Free Basics, however, Gigato (or mCent) is making no pretense that what they are doing is philanthropy of increasing access, said professor Misra, adding that it is still acceptable as user will have the data to venture out of the walled garden. The senior TRAI official too finds it acceptable. “In my opinion, Facebook should become like Gigato,” he said. <br /><br />If the regulator is going to protect consumers’ right and also not stifle startups and entrepreneurism, it will have to ensure some broad, core principles of the internet. It will have to prevent both the ISPs and the internet platforms from becoming gatekeepers. It must not allow any throttling, blocking, fast and slow lanes, discrimination based on price or quality of service and distortion of level playing field. How and whether TRAI is going to do these would be clear in a few months.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionTRAINet NeutralityInternet Governance2016-01-11T02:28:44ZNews Item