Sixty-four professors from IITs and other major tech institutes in India criticised Facebook's Free Basics program in a joint statement issued on Tuesday, saying it is neither free nor basic.


India Today, quoting the letter, says, "The 'Free Basics' proposal violates one of the core architectural principles of Internet design: net neutrality.  Compromising net neutrality, an important design principle of the Internet, would invariably lead to deep consequences on people's freedom to access and use information.  We therefore urge that the TRAI should support net neutrality in its strongest form, and thoroughly reject Facebook's 'free basics' proposal," the statement said.


The statement also dug deep into Facebook's proposal and highlighted several flaws with the Free Basic platform."The first obvious flaw in the proposal is that Facebook assumes control of defining what a 'basic' service is. They have in fact set up an interface for services to 'submit' themselves to Facebook for approval to be a 'basic' service.

This means: what are the 'basic' digital services Indians will access using their own air waves will be decided by a private corporation, and that too one based on foreign soil. The sheer absurdity of this is too obvious to point out," the statement added.


Facebook re-branded Internet.org as "Free Basics" earlier this year and is aggressively pushing the platform as a means of connecting Indians who do not have access to the internet with free access on its platform.