India introduces net neutrality rules barring Facebook's free Internet
Source: Reuters
India introduced rules on Monday to prevent Internet service providers from having different pricing policies for accessing different parts of the Web, in a setback to Facebook Inc's plan to roll out a pared-back free Internet service to the masses.
The new rules came after a two-month-long consultation process that saw Facebook (FB.O) launching a big advertising campaign in support of its Free Basics program, which runs in more than 35 developing countries.
The program offers pared-down Internet services on mobile phones, along with access to the company's own social network and messaging services, without charge.
The service, earlier known as internet.org, has also run into trouble in other countries that have accused Facebook of infringing the principle of net neutrality - the concept that all websites and data on the Internet be treated equally.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-regulator-netneutrality-idUSKCN0VH162
This is probably one of the clearest net neutrality dilemmas out there: can content providers pay bandwidth providers for their user's bandwidth, or must those charges be borne by the users? (The Netflix case in the US that first brought this to public attention was similar: Netflix ran its own fiber to bypass some tier 1's, and then paid for some of the last-mile bandwidth to its users -- sounds great at first, but then the routing is no longer agnostic.)
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