India Times reported that The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) asked for Facebook and its cooperated partner Reliance Communications to stop the Free Basics project, which was called Internet.org in the past.
An Indian officer claimed:” We notified Reliance Communications to stop the Free Basics. According to the related reports it submitted, Reliance stopped offering such service.”
Reliance Communications is the exclusive telecommunications partner for Facebook in India. They offer Free Basics together. Reliance is one of the four telecom operators, it obtained 110 million users by the past June.
The Free Basics allows users to apply Facebook and Facebook Messenger for free. In the meanwhile, users can access to WikiPedia, BBC news, Bing Search and Dictionary.com.
This service was against by its rivals there. The Free Basics gave special offer to its cooperative operator which violated the Network Neutrality. TRAI doesn’t decide a final agreement whether the Free Bacis is in accordance with the Net Neutrality.
The Free Basic involves in the agreement whether it allows different Telcom operators make different price due to the contents. Such service is unsuited to go on provided that a common view is made.
Facebook claimed that it will focus on developing the service itself. It won’t restrict the acess of other service providers. Facebook carried out some measures to let developers and other potential partners to join this service easier.
