Facebook’s Indian Free Basics program is stuck in limbo

Last year, Facebook’s Internet.org found itself at the center of India’s net neutrality debate. Over 1 million people wrote to TRAI, the country’s Telecom and internet regulator, to share their thoughts on the subject during the comment period last spring.

Nearly nine months later, we are no closer to having official guidelines on net neutrality, and in a surprising move, the regulator last month released another paper seeking people’s view on “differential pricing,” though TRAI insisted the topic didn’t fall under the ambit of net neutrality.

“Should the [telecom service providers] be allowed to have differential pricing for data usage for accessing different websites, applications or platforms?” read the first question in the regulator’s paper. “Are there alternative methods/technologies/business models, other than differentiated tariff plans, available to achieve the objective of providing free internet access to the consumers?” the TRAI paper asked in another question, in an obvious reference to platforms like Free Basics, that offer a “differentiated tariff” (aka free access) to certain websites.

It wasn’t long before the Save The Internet campaign kicked into gear, with the website encouraging users to share their views with the regulator and even providing a form with pre-populated answers to TRAI’s queries, as it had done before. As the most high-profile free internet access platform, it was no surprise that Facebook’s Free Basics was mentioned in all discussions related to the subject, with the Save The Internet campaign effectively becoming a Stop Free Basics campaign. At the end of December, the regulator appeared to give into this pressure and ordered Facebook’s telecom partner to stop Free Basics in India, pending a “specific approval.”

You’d be forgiven for not recognizing Free Basics, as the name at least is new. In September, Facebook decided to rebrand the Internet.org project, likely to counter all the bad press it was getting in India and other countries. After the change, Facebook’s project offering free, limited internet access to users by partnering with telcos was rechristened Free Basics, while Internet.org became the larger project about connecting users through moonshots like internet-beaming drones.

Critics argue that Mark Zuckerberg is more interested in finding new markets for Facebook than in connecting poor people. Facebook has reportedly spent nearly $45 million promoting Free Basics in India over the last few months and Zuckerberg also made several high-profile visits to the country in a bid to drum up support for the initiative.

“Most of the folks who are pushing for net neutrality have access to the internet already. I see these petitions going around on net neutrality, and that’s great. We need to mobilise [sic] on the internet to push for this stuff. But the people who are not on the internet, can’t sign an online petition pushing for increased access to the internet,” Zuckerberg said answering a query during one of those visits, attending a Q&A at IIT-Delhi, one of India’s premier technology institutes.

The Facebook co-founder seems incredulous at the criticism the project has faced in India, a country where roughly only 30 percent of the country has internet access. “Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims — even if that means leaving behind a billion people,” Zuckerberg wrote in an op-ed in one of India’s leading dailies. “Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim — falsely — that this will make the internet more like a walled garden.”

After the regulator’s move to halt Free Basics, Facebook renewed its own campaign, inviting people via billboards, print ads, TV spots, and, of course, Facebook notifications to write to TRAI to express their support for “free internet” – free as in beer, in case anyone was wondering. The world’s biggest social network claims over 11 million people emailed) the telecom regulator in support of Free Basics, though the regulator says it received 2.4 million responses on the subject in total, with submissions having closed on January 7th. Nearly half a million of those replies came via the Save The Internet campaign, TRAI said, clearly a vote against Free Basics. The regulator even gave Facebook a chance (PDF) to address the difference in numbers, though it’s yet to respond.

So with two high-profile net neutrality campaigns behind us, we are no closer to knowing what the regulator will actually decide. “Consultation by TRAI are not opinion polls, we are not asking if the answer is yes or no because that does not help us,” chairman of the body R.S. Sharma said recently, hinting that the sheer number of responses is unlikely to sway the regulator in either direction. The regulator has started sharing some of the responses it has received — no surprise that Facebook supports differential pricing (PDF) — but there’s no word yet on when a decision on the subject is likely to be made.

Some have asked if the government of India should be running a project like Free Basics in a bid to connect the proverbial next billion, though recent events have shown that perhaps it’s best to let the free market take its own course. In around 20 years, India has gone from a country with practically no mobile connections to a region where over a billion people now carry a mobile phone. The growth has been down to users realizing the benefits of connectivity as prices rapidly decline. With handsets becoming more affordable and powerful, and 4G soon to take off across the country, Indians look more than capable of logging on to the internet without any freebies or artificial incentives.

Facebook could argue that Free Basics is the free market at work, especially since users can “upgrade” to the full internet by paying any time they want. Indeed, Zuckerberg claimed in his op-ed that “half the people who use Free Basics to go online for the first time pay to access the full internet within 30 days.” Critics point to the walled-garden approach and the privacy concerns during the time people use Free Basics’ services. Chris Daniels, vice president of product at Facebook’s Internet.org hosted an AMA on Reddit recently where he said Facebook could monetize Free Basics using ads, which did little to allay fears about the company’s long-term plans for the platform.

While Free Basics continues to grow across the world — the program now runs in 35 countries — its future remains uncertain in India, a key market for Facebook as it looks for ways to overcome slower growth in revenue.