Startups, IITians Oppose Facebook’s Free Basic Initiative Move

30 December, New Delhi

Debate raging over Facebooks free basics initiative today got a boost with CEOs of nine startups and top academics from IIT and other premier institution publicly opposing the social networking giants move to act as a “gatekeeper” of internet.

These startup founders sent a joint letter to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chairman RS Sharma, asking the regulator to prevent telecom or content providers from acting as gate-keepers offering restricted Internet services instead of the open Internet.

Nine startup founders include Zomatos Deepinder Goyal, Paytms Vijay Shekhar Sharma, GOQiis Vishal Gondal, TrulyMadlys Sachin Bhatia, SVG Medias Manish Vij, Teesort.coms Alok Agarwal, Metis Learnings Bharat Gulia, Mouthshut.coms Faisal Farooqui, and FlipClass.coms Vineet Dwivedi, reports said.

The open nature of the Internet has spurred innovation and enabled startups to flourish. The success of Google, Facebook or of several Indian startups, including those founded by the below signatories to this letter, is a result of the open nature of the internet that permitted innovation without any entry barriers, the letter read.

While Facebook is extensively campaigning for its free basics, the Internet activists are strongly opposing the Facebook initiative. Latest to join the campaign against Free Basics are the top academics from IITs and BITS.

In a joint statement, the academics have slammed Facebooks initiative and accused it of misleading Internet users in India.This joint statement reiterates that Free Basics is against the principals of net neutrality, as it is not basic or free.

The first obvious flaw in the proposal is that Facebook assumes control of defining what a basic service is. They have in fact set up an interface for services to submit themselves to Facebook for approval to be a basic service, the statement read.