Few days back I got a notification about supporting #Freebasics in India.I thought that my friends are supporting this good initiative so I too signed up and sent an e-mail to TRAI(Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) . I am also finding so many advertisements in News Papers,YouTube ,Holdings at bus stops about "Support Connected India".One fine day I have googled about Freebasics , then I came to know the real tactics of Facebook who is behind the scene.I am trying to put the story of Freebasics here with best of my knowledge.
What is FreeBasics and Why did you get the notification in Facebook ?
Freebasics provides people free access to useful services. Go back to history, internet.org is a Facebook initiative along with six more companies(Samsung,Ericsson,MediaTek,OperaSoftware ,Nokia and Qualcomm) as partners. internet.org is re-branded as FreeBasics after it has been criticized for violating the net neutrality. I want to high-lite the question of a journalist to Mark Jukerberg "being just a Facebook proxy targeting India's poor" as it provides restricted Internet access to Reliance Telecom's subscribers in India. Free basics is launched in India with Reliance Telecom's to offer a few basic internet services free to his subscribers.subscribers has been criticized by experts as being against the net neutrality.After all this fuss TRAI asked Reliance Telecom's to stop Freebasics at least some time . For getting approval from TRAI Facebook started a campaign very aggressively and named it as "Support Freebasics in India" with spending so much of money for advertisement and what are they expecting in return?. Think it once.
It provides free services and supporting digital India like a Messiah , then What is the Issue?
Even though it sounds noble cause there is a great business plan to reap the maximum profits from India .To provide free services website or App developers has to register in Freebasics . Freebasics acts as a gatekeeper to check which sites are avialable to provide free access. According to TRAI "Collaboration between telecom service providers and content providers that enable such gatekeeping role to be played by any entity should be actively discouraged". It is against net neutrality and also stifle the start up culture in India.
What initiative has taken by Indian Start ups about net neutrality ?
After Flipkart withdraws it's app from AirtelZero to support net neutrality there is another initiative by Cleartip withdrawn from Freebasics.
What I did to rectify my mistake ?
After knowing all these facts I realized that Facebook was fooled me by sending notifications. That notification is about sending mail on bealf of me to TRAI regarding to support Freebasics in India.What's the shit I did -I sent a mail for supporting Freebasics in India and I pit for my innocence. It's okay dude , life is all about learning from mistakes . I googled for solutions then I found solutions to reject Freebasics in India. I signed up in https://www.savetheinternet.com/ and put a petition against Freebasics to ban it completely.We can also leave a comment in mygov.in website and I did this one also. It's annoying if some one fooled you and it's Tit for Tat now.
So , May be you are also there in this list please go and rectify your mistake.
Comments are most welcome
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