India’s telecom industry regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, commonly called TRAI, has slammed
In a letter, the regulator blasted Facebook’s concerted lobbying exercise as a “crudely majoritarian and orchestrated opinion poll”.
The regulator raised questions over Facebook’s claim that 16 million people sent emails to TRAI and said it had only received 1.9 million responses, that too in support of ‘Free Basics’ rather than answering specific questions posed to the public in its consultative paper on differential pricing. Facebook, meanwhile, said its emails to TRAI were ‘blocked’ and thus responses from 13.5 million users were ignored. TRAI, in turn, dismissed the explanation saying it is the first time it was hearing of it.
India is turning out to be a Net Neutrality war zone where Facebook is facing a huge backlash over its forceful effort to push Free Basics. The country is a vital, fast-growing - and potentially the world's largest - market for Facebook and much is at stake as the social network fights rivals like Google for users and revenue. Facebook's CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has been exhorting users to adopt Free Basics through newspaper commentary and the social network has mounted a massive TV, newspaper and billboard campaign to shore up support. Facebook maintains that Free Basics, which gives mobile users free access to its own social network and a few other websites and apps, promotes ‘digital equality’. Its opponents fiercely counter that the initiative is a threat to Net Neutrality and the concept of an unregulated internet, and is only aimed at growing Facebook's own market in 1.3 billion-people India.
In unprecedented, scathing language, TRAI’s letter to Facebook demands to know why it has not responded to the regulator’s question on whether the full text of its message was conveyed to the supporters of Free Basics. The letter is the latest episode in a series of heated developments between the two after Facebook delivered millions of emails in support of Free Basics to TRAI.
Since then, the regulator has temporarily barred Free Basics which was being offered through India’s telecom service provider
The regulator’s letter, which has been widely circulated, addressing Facebook’s India head of public policy, says, “In light of the tangential natures of the responses by the users to the questions asked, the communication of the text was vital to demonstrating and ensuring that those who are responding to TRAI are making informed decisions.” The regulator says that it sent Facebook two specific requests for the same.
Meanwhile, Facebook said in a statement that 1.4 million Indians had responded with revised comments to address the regulator questions and, therefore, the company had already complied with the request. A statement from Facebook added, “We are not aware of a similar request having been made to any of the other commenters who did not answer specific questions.” The social network said it had not sent the specific wording as drafted by TRAI, but had delivered to all its supporters a request for additional information.
The regulator, however, was not satisfied and further slammed Facebook saying that such an interpretation was unwarranted. “If such interpretations are accepted, it will have dangerous ramifications for policy-making in India.”
