India’s everlasting net neutrality debate never ceases to amaze me. This time, however, the fight isn’t between telcos and over-the-top (OTT) service providers. It’s between Facebook and everybody else — barring a few of Facebook’s telco partners.

As a matter of fact, Free Basics is a perfect case study for budding advocacy junkies on how not to ‘lobby’ a government or its people. (Lobbying continues to be illegal in India.)

First up, hats off to Facebook’s creative agency for the new catchy name.

'Free Basics' beats 'Internet.org' hands down. Internet.org sounded like a Berkeley-based NGO advocating digital rights, privacy and all that e-mush. Free Basics is direct and, to be fair to Facebook, more honest.

Net of Neutrality

But successful repackaging can only take you so far. If only Facebook had been transparent and upfront about its intentions from day one, it could have averted a colossal public relations disaster. Instead of reportedly burning around Rs 300 crore on full and front-page advertisements in newspapers like this one, why couldn’t Facebook have been forthright in telling us that, like Google, SpaceX or any other business, it intends to grow its top-line by connecting Indians who aren’t on the internet to a limited version of it?

It’s the ‘I’m holier-than-thou’ spin that’s landed Facebook in a soup. It always does. Google, for instance, isn’t branding Project Loon - still under research, its goal being to provide Internet access to remote areas through an aerial network of balloons - as a corporate social responsibility or pro bono initiative.

But amid the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)-Facebook slugfest that’s presently underway, yet again, policymakers in the department of telecom (DoT) and Trai have failed to think outside the box. A win-win solution for everyone - especially India’s unconnected consumer who seeks a neutral Internet - is sitting right at their doorstep.

Every nation raises and administers its own variant of a universal service access fund to provide financial viability for the roll-out of telecommunications infrastructure in underconnected areas. Simply put, industry steers clear of venturing into areas where there’s little or no techno-commercial viability.

And you can’t blame industry for doing so. And that’s where India’s Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) comes in. USOF is tasked with providing “widespread and non-discriminatory access to quality ICT [information and communication technology] services at affordable prices to people in rural and remote areas”, the operative term being “non-discriminatory”.

USOF is used to provide viability gap funding for basic voice services - in some cases, such as for hilly and remote terrains in the northeast, leveraging microwave and other unconventional wireless technologies.

And during my stint as minister of state for communications and information technology under Manmohan Singh’s prime ministership, we decided to utilise USOF to finance the roll-out of an optical fibre network to provide 2,50,000 panchayats non-discriminatory access to broadband.

We also tapped USOF to incentivise telcos to venture into areas affected by left-wing extremism, which, until then, were unserved and unappealing markets for telcos.

Nothing Free, Nothing Basic

Not only is USOF a successful example of a public-private partnership that worked, and continues to deliver on the ground, but it also puts the moral and constitutional onus on the state to guarantee its citizens universal access to telecommunications services, including a neutral internet.

This government’s oblivious response to Free Basics has granted the private sector a back-door entry to encroach upon the powers of the state.

Instead of allowing the Free Basics debate to be centred around net neutrality, the government should have called Facebook’s bluff about wanting to connect and empower Indians and invited it to bid for USOF projects to light up rural and remote areas. If the folks in my erstwhile office Sanchar Bhawan aren’t reading this, it still isn’t too late for Facebook to make overtures.

In hindsight, perhaps participating in USOF tenders would have fulfilled Facebook’s aspiration of expanding towards distribution from content aggregation.

Regardless, Facebook would have furthered its goal of adding more Internet subscribers - most of whom would have become Facebook enthusiasts even on a neutral network - forestalled a PR calamity and spent its $16 billion IPO money more wisely. Didn’t I say this was a win-win idea?

Once X - Google’s secret R&D facility - gets those Project Loon balloons to work like base transceiver stations, maybe DoT and Trai should invite Google to collaborate with USOF. At least that way, India will usher in the world’s first 21st-century telco - where unlicensed and unregulated operators provide consumers a newer version of the Internet that’s free and neutral.

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