Mark Zuckerberg's "Free Basics" platform under Internet.org suffered a huge defeat in India. The platform provides free Internet connection to under-served areas with little or no Internet connection, but the access to the Internet is limited to certain "basic" ad-free apps, including Facebook. On February 8, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issued "Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations”—which bans differential pricing arrangements for internet access, including the practice is known as "zero rating" by which usage of certain preferred apps does not count toward paid data usage.
TRAI explained: "In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users' internet experience. This can prove to be risky in the medium to long term as the knowledge and outlook of those users would be shaped only by the information made availablethrough those select offerings. Further, to the extent that affordability of access is noted to be a cause for exclusion, it is not clear as to how the same users will be in a position to migrate to the open internet if they do not have the resources to do so in the first place."
