IIT, IISc faculty oppose Facebook’s Free Basics

Computer faculty and scientists from  leading Indian institutes have voiced reservations over Free Basics, and called on the telecom regulator to reject Facebook's plan in the interest of protecting the citizens' rights to use their own public utility, the internet.

''Allowing a private entity to define for Indian internet users what is 'basic', to control what content costs how much, and to have access to the personal content created and used by millions of Indians, is a lethal combination which will lead to total lack of freedom on how Indians can use their own public utility, the internet,'' said a joint statement from the academic community.

Among them are professors from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Mumbai, Kharagpur and Delhi as also the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

The issue would come up before the Telecom Regulatory Authority of Indian in January.

Till then, the regulator is seeking responses from the public over differential pricing for internet services. According to net neutrality activists Free Basics would discriminate against access to a large number of Indians.

They contend that the term 'free' in Free Basics was a marketing gimmick, adding, the cost of access would be borne by users.

Meanwhile, according to Mahesh Murthy, a net neutrality activist, venture capitalist, founder Pinstorm, Facebook was misleading Indians with its full page ads about Free Basics.

Murthy said in a post on LinkedIn that Facebook was spending Rs100 crore on ads, which was a third of its India revenue.

He said that India's airwaves and wireless spectrum belong to the citizens of India, which the government temporarily licenses to telcos under some terms and conditions, and those terms had always pushed for the development of all of India, including our poor.

Thanks to these policies, India had over a billion connections which were changing and improving lives of all its citizens. The basis for this has always our policies which had forced mobile operators to offer a full and open internet, accessible by anybody. However, Facebook had been spending millions of dollars to change to change India's policies.

''Imagine now that there's a new policy that could let a mobile company only offer you Facebook and nothing else on government spectrum? Not Google, not Naukri, not You Tube, no site you really need. But instead all you can have is Facebook, and a bunch of other teeny tiny sites, and that's all you can ever use.''