India Blocks Facebook's Free Basics Internet Service (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: India's leading telecom regulator, TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), has today voted against differential pricing, ruling with immediate effect that all data prices must be equal, and that companies cannot offer cheaper rates than others for certain content. The call is a significant blow to Facebook's Free Basics (previously Internet.org) initiative and Airtel Zero – projects which work to make internet access more accessible by providing a free range of "basic" services. The watchdog confirmed that providers would no longer be able to charge for data based on discriminatory tariffs but instead that pricing must be "content agnostic." It added that fines of Rs. 50,000 – 50 Lakh would be enforced should the regulations be violated.

Comments

Alternate title

[stoborrobots]

Alternate title: "India insists on network neutrality"

Re:Alternate title

[Anonymous Coward]

Or another:
India still on the path to socialism/communism.

Or another:
Morons on Slashdot still think Capitalism and free markets work as promised.

Re:Alternate title

[Anonymous Coward]

No they insist on equal pricing. They don't care if the provider is net neutral, just that they don't compete with them.

What they actually insists on (for those not RTFA) is the second link in the summary -- pricing must be "content agnostic". If you offer Internet connectivity you can't price data traffic going to Facebook lower than what you price data traffic going to YouTube or whatever. That is indeed a core net neutrality issue, because network providers could otherwise easily use differentiated pricing and zero-rating as an unfair advantage for some internet services over others. A few bundling deals and the market would be locked in for anyone wanting to challenge the established Internet services.

Re:Alternate title

[houghi]

1) This is not directed at the poor. This is directed at others who are already able to pay. This has been posted and explained several times by people living in the country.
2) The downside is that it is not a complete free Internet service. Other sited are blocked. They are not a provider.

As some sites are blocked, there is no net neutrality. Now if they were to open everything and become a true free provider (with all the rules that come with it) that would be something else. This is not about what price they charge; but by what rules they play and they do not play by the provder rules, yet they clai, they are.

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Calling a tulip a rose does not make it a rose.

Re:Alternate title

[jellomizer]

So you are stating in a story that a free internet meant to be given to the poor, from a For Profit Company, however being blocked by the government because it has interests in keeping the underclass out of power, and probably have ties with other telecom companies, to block competition because they are offer lower price as a key competitive advantage. Is showing the evils of capitalism. Where in this case free market is motivated to provide free infrastructure in order to increase revenue from services offered.

Stop over simplifying things. Unregulated capitalism is bad, Over regulated capitalism is just as bad too. The details is important, not the political stance.

On paper, this is a good decision

[NotDrWho]

But I can't help but wonder in practice if it won't leave a lot of poor people with no internet access at all.

Sure, it's nice to have an even playing field. But when you're starving, do you really want the government telling McDonalds that they can't give you free food because that wouldn't be fair to Burger King?

Re:On paper, this is a good decision

[avandesande]

Or maybe it's about a foreign entity putting a bunch of small local providers out of business and then changing their mind about the service being free. I think it is called 'predatory pricing'.

Re:On paper, this is a good decision

[angel'o'sphere]

Why should the government be in the business of protecting local food sellers
E.g. because they are tax payers?
Or when they end on the street in poverty they become bandits? (Ah, yes that is illegal, let the cops and courts deal with that)

American companies try to ruin local food farming and selling all over the world (and other farming, like for cotton). As the local business often is not strong enough to survive, obviously governments need to introduce laws if they want local companies to survive.

Luckily for you, you live in a country where the big companies ruling the world have their origin. Luckily for you you seem not to need laws that protect you. Yet.

Re:On paper, this is a good decision

[jrumney]

Why should the government be in the business of protecting local food sellers (and telling me what I can and can't eat)?

Because the government is the one who gets to pick up the tab when your local food industry has been destroyed by the multinational companies that are dumping their product, and for the health effects (even if the government doesn't pay directly for health, they pay indirectly through the effect poor health has on the economy). The government is the one who gets to pick up the tab when the local internet industry is destroyed because they don't fit into Facebook's internet.org ecosystem so there is no longer a market for their services, and for the long-term effect on education of being able to access only a limited sandbox instead of the Internet.

Re:On paper, this is a good decision

[tlambert]

But I can't help but wonder in practice if it won't leave a lot of poor people with no internet access at all.

Sure, it's nice to have an even playing field. But when you're starving, do you really want the government telling McDonalds that they can't give you free food because that wouldn't be fair to Burger King?

This is the intent.

You didn't think that all the poor people with no internet access at all were the ones posting online about the lack of neutrality in the offering, did you? The people posting already have Internet access, and so the only impact on them would be:

(1) If they were one of the companies that refused to partner with Facebook, which means that they were unable to successfully compete in markets (e.g. job sites, etc.) where they were already underdogs, or

(2) They were ordinary Indians, more well off than the poor, who were suddenly forced to compete with well educated poor, who had the ability to apply for jobs which they coveted

(3) They were people who had to pay for their service, felt that if poor people received free service, they should too, and were upset that the free service was not as extensive as their current paid service

So it's basically a strategy to keep the target market segmentation of startup sites focussed on "not the poor", anti-competitive for labor, against the currently disenfranchised (keeping them that way), and people wanting their existing something for nothing, rather than a new thing that is a lesser something for nothing.

Welcome to India.

Re:On paper, this is a good decision

[angel'o'sphere]

No idea for what you then pay taxes.

I for my part pay taxes exactly for the reason that my local "infrastructure" survives onslaughts of greedy US corporations ;D

I don't pay taxes so that my money can be used to prop up businesses that can't compete on their own.
How exactly do you think a local business which is doing perhaps $100,000 in turn overs can compete with a multi billion company that "thinks" it can take over the business? How retarded are you?

If you have a near endless money supply you can drive anyone out of business, unless there are laws preventing exactly that.

Re:On paper, this is a good decision

[KGIII]

Let me try?

"We'd like to give hungry people a free cookie if they visit our store."
"If they're hungry, you must give them a full meal. A cookie is not a nutritionally balanced meal."
"Isn't a cookie better than nothing and we're only going to give free cookies, sorry."
"We told you once, a cookie is not a nutritionally balanced meal!"
"We understand that but we also know they're hungry and we're prepared to give them a cookie. That cookie is sure to help at least a li..."
"We said, NO COOKIE! No CHOICE! No!"

I'm not really one to support a government abusing its populace and taking away their choices - in most cases. It's the country, their government, and they can do what they want and all but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If I had time and inclination, I'd look to see who it was that had an official's ear and was profiting off of cookies or who had motivation to keep the hungry from eating cookies. I consider myself a fairly well-reasoned individual and I am usually pretty good, I think and am told, at understanding the views offered by others but, try as I might, I am unable to understand what the actual value is here. What value do they get in denying hungry people a cookie, for free, when nobody is offering them a full, balanced, meal?

They're not targeting the absolute poorest, no. However, they're offering aid to those who are not so wealthy that they can comfortably afford any access at all. No, it's not altruism, not entirely. However, I'm not sure why taking the choice away is beneficial nor do I understand why helping people is ...

NO COOKIE!

Why is it called differential pricing?

[MobyDisk]

voted against differential pricing, ruling with immediate effect that all data prices must be equal, and that companies cannot offer cheaper rates than others for certain content

The decision makes sense, but the reasoning and naming is nonsensical. It is fine for data prices to be different, and it is fine for companies to offer cheaper rates than others. The issue is that they cannot offer a "partial" internet. They must offer the entire internet, or none at all. This would make more sense to be called "differential content."

Any vision into the naming here? It seems like it sends the wrong message. Or maybe this is a translation problem?

Re:Why is it called differential pricing?

[gstoddart]

As I understand it, differential pricing is "this data will be free for you, whereas accessing this stuff will cost you" -- because you're getting a cut from the revenue of the first set of data.

Basically people would be pushed to preferentially use Facebook for everything, while being penalized for using anything else.

So, we'll give you all the Facebook you can handle, but go to YouTube and we'll charge you more.

It boils down to differential pricing when data from one source is made to artificially cost less than data coming from another source.

Re: Why is it called differential pricing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, this is not the case. Simply look at other places where FB is providing this service and you'll see its access to most of the internet for free. If you want FB services you can certainly pay to get premium services but you can also ignore FB and still have very reasonable and helpful access to pretty much the rest of the net.

It's not "pretty much the rest of the web". Apart from banning high-bandwidth traffic such as videos (which might be understandable on cost grounds) they also ban JS and HTTPS other than Facebook and sites they select. This means you can't provide an alternative social media platform. Nor can you provide any sort of secure service such as shopping or messaging without their collaboration.

Essentially, FB are using cash from overseas to subsidize this service and therefore are making it commercially impossible to set up a financially self-sustaining internet access business that covers the section of India's huge population who haven't yet reached middle-class income levels. Any who wants to set up an internet business targeting this population will therefore have to go through FB's platform on terms FB imposes. Once India's e-commerce establishes itself using FB's platform it will be very difficult to change - even if FB stops offering this particular free internet deal or if more people can afford to pay for full internet access.

Corruption

[BitZtream]

Seriously ... one of the most corrupt countries on the planet puts into effect a law to enforce net neutrality and prevent subversion ...

And we (USA) can't ... W ... T ... F ...

Re:Corruption

[dell623]

You can know by wanting to know - this isn't China we are discussing.

There was a massive public campaign: https://www.savetheinternet.in...

The founders of hundreds of Indian startups signed a letter calling for net neutrality.

The regulatory authority TRAI received 2.4 million public submissions, mostly favouring net neutrality.

India is a corrupt country but don't get so hung up on stereotypes.

Also, unlike China, Facebook is the dominant social network in India as much as it is everywhere else. There are no local alternatives - most internet users would be comfortable enough with English to just use Facebook and multi language support takes care of the rest. What's app is huge as you would expect. So there is no question of keeping Facebook out. Just the Zuckernet - India doesn't want the Zuckernet.

I cannot believe an audience like Slashdot does not get the implications of something like this. Imagine if the internet had been considered too expensive for poorer countries and the only 'internet' that reached poorer countries was a curated government managed internet in the guise of making it cheap. Why does India need the real internet at all, they can't afford it anyway, just like they shouldn't be flying rockets and shit. Let's switch the whole country to free Zuckernet.

Re:50 Lakh = 5 million

[devjoe]

But it's 5 million rupees, or about 75,000 US dollars. If that's all the fine is then Facebook will just pay it and move ahead with their Net non-Neutral program.

Re:Facebook

[Crashmarik]

Seems a company that had ties with the government was losing money because of facebook.

Either that or were planning to develop this market for themselves.

Re:This is why India is poor

[frog_strat]

The citizenry of of modern societies face not one potential inside enemy (the government) but two (government and corporations). The trick is to balance these so there is healthy commerce while not abusing too much of the citizenry. To be honest, any sane society will keep an eye on any center of power, it is a problem with all large organizational structures (Scientology). Remember that government is at least theoretically responsible for keeping the system healthy for citizens, while in the US, for practical purposes, corporations have a charter (sometimes enforced by shareholder lawsuit) to make a profit at any cost.

Re:Corruption at every level

[danbob999]

This is Net Neutrality, like it or not.
They are not forbidden to offer Internet for free. If they want to give 200MB/month to everyone for free, it's fine. People will be free to use it for whatever they want however, not just Facebook. There is no technical reason why an ISP could offer free Facebook but not a small, neutral, amount of data.

This is a good decision. period.

[dell623]

That is the kind of condescending attitude that people like Mark Zuckerberg have that really pisses off people know who anything about internet access in India. That whole 'let them eat stale bread for free' thing.

The choice between Zuckerberg curated internet and no internet is a made up, false dichotomy. Whatever else you may say or hate about Google, I much much prefer their philosophy of fast internet is good for Google and therefore they focus on improving access to ALL of the internet.

For anyone who has been to a train station in India for example, this is an absolute godsend: http://indianexpress.com/artic...

And a huge number of poorer Indians use trains - we are talking millions of people every day if they cover the 100 largest stations with adequate bandwidth.

The biggest barrier to internet access in India is not just the cost. And the reason for the high cost is not just the fact that people are poor - the licensing regime and restricted spectrum are far bigger factors than price.

This has been big news in India and most opinion was strongly against Facebook. You can read some of the arguments here: http://blogs.timesofindia.indi...

Being poor or poorer doesn't universally bestow some sort of nobility or sense of purpose or a special hunger for knowledge. Most people in the third world use the internet for what the developed world does - games and pointless social media and sharing garbage. That is exactly what the free 'tablets' that a misguided minister subsidized in India a few years ago were mostly used for.

Provide internet access in public spaces, and in schools and universities Mr. Zuckerberg if you really give a shit.