Assume you're living in Mumbai and you have to go to Pune. A construction company has built the Expressway. This construction company collects toll charges for this service, and you pay it since you are using their services.
Now, you have to choose between AB travels and PQ travels. Both are offering the same service, that is - taking you from Mumbai to Pune. However, AB travels have made an agreement with the construction company. If you choose AB travels, then you don't have to pay toll charges. But if you use PQ travels, then you have to pay the toll charges.
Understand that the road is a public property. Construction company can collect toll charges because they are providing easy transport facility. But they cannot collect different toll charges from different people.
Now, applying this concept to the case in point -
You want to purchase a product through the internet (travel from Mumbai to Pune). You have two options, Flipkart (PQ travels) and Snapdeal (AB travels). Now, you can purchase these products only via internet (the road). The internet is operated by Reliance (construction company). You have to pay internet charges (toll charges) to Reliance.
Now, you like to purchase the product through Flipkart (because you like it better), but you have to pay more because Reliance (construction company) has a deal with Snapdeal (AB travels).
Just like same buses cannot be charged differently for using the same road; in the same manner, same services cannot be charged differently for using the same internet. This is against the principle of net neutrality
Read on to understand better:
[A] WHAT IS FREE BASICS?
Free Basics is a platform given by Facebook in association with telecom operators, where certain basic internet websites will be available free of cost. This means, if you are visiting Facebook's website, then you don't have to pay internet charges. However, if you are visiting other websites, such as Google, then you will need to pay the internet charges.
In India, Facebook has tied up with Reliance to make certain websites free of cost. Here is a list of all the websites which are available for free, as per Reliance's website. If you visit any of these websites, then you don't have to pay internet charges. For other websites however, you will continue to pay.
Before moving further, I would compliment Facebook for smartly renaming their internet.org as "Free Basics". Anything that is 'free' grabs attention in India, and if it's 'basics', it must definitely be supported. Also notice that Free Basics can be abbreviated as 'FB' - smart move!
[B] WHAT DOES RELIANCE GAIN FROM THIS?
Here is the deal: you want to access Facebook. You have two options: (1) You can choose Reliance network, and access it for free; or (2) You can choose other telecom operators and pay for the same service. What will you do? It is obvious that people would prefer to go for Reliance.
However, once you register on the Reliance network, you realise that actually you need more than just Free Basics. If you see the list of websites available as per this initiative, you will appreciate that it offers nothing significant, and you will anyway need to pay for the other services.
When these people, who are now interested in internet, get converted to full payment service, then Reliance becomes their obvious choice. Therefore, telecom operators gain from Free Basics because it increases their subscribers.
[C] WHAT IF OTHER TELECOM OPERATORS JOIN?
We have discussed that Reliance is interested in Free Basics because it gives them an edge over other telecom providers. However, what if other telecom operators also join in. Imagine that all the major telecom operators in India such as Idea, Airtel, Vodafone etc. join the Free Basics platform, what happens then?
We can understand that, then, Reliance will not have any inherent advantage. In that sense, we will see that all the websites listed above will be available for free on all the networks. In that case, what do these telecom operators gain? Aren't they all just killing themselves?
The fact is: these telecom operators are interested in this initiative because it gives them more subscribers. It increases the size of the market as a whole. A lot of people from rural India who have never used internet on their mobile phones will now start using internet. In this whole initiative, the telecom operators will eventually win, because their subscriber base rises.
You may argue that they are not charging for it (because it is free basics). But this argument is foolish, because you and I both appreciate that the websites offered by Free Basics are not even basics. They are not offering useful websites like Khan Academy, or Amazon, or Quora, or even Google. Therefore, any person who subscribes to Free Basics will eventually want to shift to the full version of internet.
[D] THEN WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
So far we believe that Free Basics is useful because it tries to give people a taste of what internet looks like; and then if they are interested, they can switch to the full version of internet where they can access the whole lot of things that you and I are already accessing on the internet.
So far so good. But the issue with Free Basics is different: who decides what websites should be for free?
Take two illustrations to understand this better:
- Suppose you start a website that caters to the weather forecast requirements of farmers. With the help of Free Basics, a lot of farmers are able to use internet. However, they cannot access your application because your website is not available in the Free Basics platform.
- On the other hand, assume a farmer wants to buy a television set for his family. He has an option of buying from Flipkart or Amazon. However, he can only access Amazon because other websites are not available for free. Maybe, he ends up paying more for that TV set.
The issue with Free Basics is that, it is controlling the content available for the subscribers of internet. Therefore, your website will not be able to reach a lot of subscribers just because you don't have a tie up with Free Basics. This is outright unfair - both to the website owners (such as the person who works hard to create a useful website for farmers) and also the subscribers (such as the farmer who doesn't even know that he can have better facilities on other websites). This is against the principle of net neutrality.
[E] WHY IS NET NEUTRALITY SO IMPORTANT?
Facebook is publicising Free Basics on the hope that it will connect a lot of people to internet - those people who previously were not connected. In this way, Facebook claims, they can get access to a lot of advantages that internet offers them. However, this sentence is really a fraud.
Free Basics is not offering them internet, it is offering them sponsored content
We must understand that internet is really only internet if it gives equal opportunities to all the people. What Free Basics is doing, is that it is giving only selected websites to these people for free. Therefore, it is unfair because those websites will now have more viewers than others. And in this way, the other websites will suffer. And the very premise on which internet flourished, will be destroyed.
Let us look at certain examples to have a better understanding of why net neutrality is so important:
- Why is a company like Flipkart able to compete with Amazon today. This is because they have an equal platform called the internet. Today, they are competing only on the basis of their services. This is a healthy competition and it is beneficial for everyone.
- Startups like Ola are able to efficiently compete with established taxi companies such as Uber. Just imagine what would have happened if Ola did not have an equal opportunity? What would have happened if Uber was available for free and not Ola?
You see: internet is giving an equal opportunity to a number of people because all of them can reach so many users at the same time. This is the magic of internet. Therefore, with the advent of internet, people are able to genuinely compete only on the basis of services that they offer.
Free Basics is going to destroy that. This model will give some companies an edge over the others and will therefore discourage other innovative ideas.
[F] THEN WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
You are probably thinking that if Free Basics is not an option, then how can we connect the rest of India with internet. There is no denying that a lot of users in India are not connected to the internet, and we know that they would be better off if they were genuinely connected to all the plethora of services that internet can offer them.
But this cannot be done by differentiating between some websites over others. Moreover, the power of differentiation cannot be controlled by a single entity (Facebook). This is the case of too much power in the hands of too few people, and this is always disastrous.
A better solution is to provide all the internet for free.
Tell all the subscribers that they will have, say 500 MB of data free, every month. In this way, everybody will get to use some internet. They will realise the advantages it has to offer, and will then want to have more. If a not-so-smart person like me can come up with this idea, obviously the intelligent people in India can come up with much better ideas.
CONCLUSION
The problem with Free Basics is that it is monitoring the content which is available for free. In this manner, everybody does not get an equal chance or equal visibility. This is problematic for website owners (who will have less incentive to innovate and improve) and for internet users (who will not have all the options).
Internet is a very good thing. It has ensured that proper content gets recognition and can be used by several people for many genuine advantages. However, initiatives like Free Basics are giving a lot of control to private entities such as Facebook, and that is not a good thing.
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