Free Basics is not Free

For the past few days, my notifications on Facebook are flooding with the fact that my friends have voiced their support for Free Basics. The way Free Basics is being advertised for the past few weeks, it seems like it’s the ultimate solution to the poverty and illiteracy problem faced in India! Overwhelmed by these notifications, I have had the urge to be a part of this patriotic spirit more than once, but my stubborn nature has prevented me from following the trend. Thank God!

The reason I am relieved is that I recently realized that Free Basics is nothing but a scam organized by none other than Facebook and it is conning people into believing that they are doing this to support Net Neutrality when actually they are doing the exact opposite! It took me a while to really understand how dire the situation is (and I’ve provided links of a couple of videos that explain this scam really well). I’ve also tried to explain it here:

• What’s the difference between Net Neutrality and the principle behind Free Basics as claimed by Facebook? Facebook says that EVERYONE should be able to access the Internet. True. Access to knowledge (which in today’s world is equivalent to the internet) is a basic human right. Net Neutrality on the other hand means that EVERYONE should be able to access EVERYTHING on the internet. That one word changes everything! In order to achieve Net Neutrality, all content on the internet must be treated as EQUAL and they should be accessible at EQUAL speed.
• Right now, Free Basics is an ad-free zone but this doesn’t ensure that it will remain an ad-free zone in future. Personally, for the sake of my nation, I wouldn’t mind watching a couple of advertisements, provided that the revenue collected from these ads is used to provide the free basic internet to masses. But that’s not going to be the case. What’s going to happen is that everyone will be provided with very basic internet facility (a collection of apps and websites handpicked by our TSP) free of cost. But whenever we’ll need to use apps and websites outside the available limited choices, we’ll have to pay extra money.
• Fledgling businesses and start-ups will suffer tremendously because they won’t have the financial capital needed to partner with TSPs and hence will never see the daylight. Ironically, Facebook itself started small and then became the Giant that it is today. If the current situation would have taken place before February 2004, then Facebook would have born and died without even creating the slightest stir in society! Even though Internet.org is open for third party developers to develop their services on the given platform, they have to adhere to Facebook’s rules and face major restrictions. Facebook isn’t trying to protect your rights; it’s only eliminating the competition and making sure that there’ll be no other such contender in the future, ever.
• In some cases our telecommunication service providers might partner up with certain services and make that free and available for us. Hypothetically, say your TSP has a pact with some hypothetical news website named The News. Hence its website will be available to you for free and will also load at a much faster speed. On the other hand, other news website, say Times of India, will load at snail slow pace and that too after we have specifically purchased the respective package. Over time we’ll always settle for the free and faster deals. Thus TSPs get to play God and any company or brand which doesn’t partner with it will eventually fade out.
• The Telecommunication Service Providers want to slice the services available on the internet into various packages and charge money to the customers as and when we use a package. So for example if the email facility is available in the basic package then nobody needs to pay extra money to use it. But suppose you want to use YouTube and that is not in the basic package, in that case customer has to pay extra. After that suppose you want to access Amazon which is in a different package altogether, customer has to purchase that package separately. Is it fair? It’s the digitization of television all over again; only worse because the Internet is the last frontier where everyone is equal!

 

If you too have been fooled into supporting Free Basics, well that can’t be undone. What you can do is visit SaveTheInternet.in and email TRAI, the deadline being 30^th December, 2015. Go through the email that you are sending (It’s long but not too long) if you want to make an informed decision. You can also check out their blog if you need more information on this. Be a responsible citizen and fight for your right: all you have to do is send an email to TRAI. Spectrum is a public utility and telecom operators should not be allowed use it to advance their business interests. As consumer, only we should have the right to decide which service or product we’ll use, not the TSPs. Please share this information and make sure that you email TRAI.