Controlled v/s No Internet Access
Facebook had teamed up with Reliance Communications to provide Free Basics, a Facebook initiative to provide free Internet access to certain web sites. That sounds like a good thing, right? Poor people, who might otherwise be unable to afford access Internet access would get, well, free access. So what did the Indian government find wrong that? The key part of contention is that Free Basics only applies to certain web sites , not the entire Internet. So what, you wonder. Isn’t some access for the poor better than no access? And that’s the argument that Facebook takes on the topic, not just in India but worldwide where they have similar initiatives. Ah, but that’s where things get tricky. There is an Internet principle called Net Neutrality: simply put, just like we don’t provide better roads for BMW owners as opposed to 2-wheelers, the Internet providers are supposed to provide the same connectivity speeds regardless of which web site is being connected to. The idea here is ...