Facebook’s Free Basics could distort markets: World Bank
New Delhi: The World Bank has warned that services such as Facebook’s Free Basics, where some basic content is offered free and other content is subject to data charges, could lead to market distortions.
The recent trend to develop such services “would appear to be the antithesis of net neutrality and a distortion of markets”, said the World Development Report 2016, released on Wednesday.
The term Net neutrality was derived out of debates in the US about the bandwidth consumed by video downloads; network providers sought to charge higher rates for services chewing up more bandwidth while content providers wanted an “open” and “free” Internet where every bit of data was treated equally.
In other parts of the world including India, the debate over Net neutrality has been recognized as a matter of freedom of expression or access to information for individuals—a human rights issue, the report said.
“(Online) traffic management measures (by network operators so as to monetise content which uses higher bandwidth or to provide different content and services at different price points), while legitimate, should not reduce the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly freedom of expression,” the World Bank report said. “In whatever form a country would wish to use the Internet for development purposes, its public policies should ensure that technical management of Internet traffic is not used.”
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