14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Zuckerberg penned an open letter to India's telecom regulatory body, which skewers its leaders for daring to shut down a free Internet access plan (called Free Basics) provided by Facebook.
The whole controversy started last week, when, before Christmas, India's telecommunications regulatory body asked Reliance, Facebook's Internet.org partner in India, to shut down its Free Basics offering.
Government officials said they would evaluate net neutrality in India and if ISPs should be allowed to price access to various Internet sites differently.
Indian government doesn't like Facebook in its role of Internet gatekeeper
The whole situation was sparked by the fact that Facebook's Free Basics Internet access plan offered through the Internet.org platform and Reliance was giving its users access only to a certain list of educational, health, communication, and job seeking sites (and Facebook, of course).
Facebook is the one that decides which sites can be accessed through the Free Basics plan, which theoretically puts it on the "dark side" of the net neutrality battle.
Unlike the similar net neutrality battle in the US and Europe, Facebook does not charge any money for its service, which is the exact point that Mark Zuckerberg expressed in his open letter, saying his service does more good than harm to India's Internet service providers.
Zuckerberg: Free Basics does not infringe on net neutrality
Facebook's CEO claims that India should not be debating net neutrality when very few of its people have Internet access. In his view, this is a debate that the country needs to have later on, and possibly involving companies that don't provide free services like his.
"Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims - even if that means leaving behind a billion people," Zuckerberg wrote.
"Instead of welcoming Free Basics as an open platform that will partner with any telco, and allows any developer to offer services to people for free, they claim - falsely - that this will give people less choice," he also added.
Mr. Zuckerberg also reminded India's regulatory body that half of the people that accessed the Internet for the first time in their life through his Free Basics service in India later moved on to a commercial Internet plan provided by Reliance or other mobile providers.
Basically, even though he's not saying it in his own words, Marc Zuckerberg is annoyed that instead of "thanks for the new clients," Indian ISPs are trying to take down his service.