Facebook CEO defends free Internet plan

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg mounted a defense of his company’s program to provide free Internet access in India on Monday, soon after the country’s telecom regulator reportedly moved to block it.

Writing in the Times of India, Zuckerberg said that “in the 21st century, everyone also deserves access to the tools and information that can help them to achieve all those other public services, and all their fundamental social and economic rights.”

{mosads}“That’s why everyone also deserves access to free basic internet services,” he said.

India has been a battleground over whether Facebook’s Free Basics offering, which used to be called Internet.org Basic Services, violates net neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the Internet should be treated in the same way.

Local cellphone providers partner with Facebook to offer a suite of online tools that customers can use for free. Supporters say that employing this practice, called “zero-rating,” allows people in developing countries to access the Internet even if they can’t pay for it.

Critics contend that zero-rating violates net neutrality and increases the chances that some users will have access only to those parts of the Internet.

Zuckerberg penned the op-ed as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) considers how to deal with net neutrality. Last week, the regulator reportedly told Reliance Communications, the Indian telecommunications company that is a Facebook partner for Free Basics, to stop offering the service while it determines whether it violates net neutrality.

The Facebook CEO said that keeping the service out of users’ reach denied them access to vital services.

“We’ve heard legitimate concerns in the past, and we’ve quickly addressed those,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re open to other approaches and encourage innovation.

“But today this program is creating huge benefits for people and the entire internet ecosystem. There’s no valid basis for denying people the choice to use Free Basics, and that’s what thousands of people across India have chosen to tell TRAI over the last few weeks.”

He also argued that the service “respects net neutrality.”

“Instead of welcoming Free Basics as an open platform that will partner with any telco, and allows any developer to offer services to people for free, they claim — falsely — that this will give people less choice,” he said of the program’s critics.

Tags Facebook Mark Zuckerberg

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