Facebook’s persuasive skills met with little luck as it tried to convince higher authorities in government to allow ‘Free Basics’ till a day before the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India came out with regulations to ban discriminatory pricing for data services provided by different operators.

Senior officials from Facebook tried to convince Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on allowing Free Basics in India when he was on a visit to Harvard University a couple of days back. According to sources, the Minister declined to consider their request on the grounds that tariff regulations could be decided only by TRAI.

“The minister told the Facebook officials that the DoT has no role in deciding tariff and said the company may go to Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) if it felt so,” a government official told BusinessLine .

The government was also not comfortable with the campaigns for Free Basics, the official said, adding that “TRAI has enhanced the image of India in the Net community the world over.”

TRAI came out with regulations on February 8 endorsing Net neutrality. The arguments on the regulations reached its peak in the social media on Wednesday when Facebook’s board member Marc Andreessen faced strong reactions for his tweet that what the Indian government has done is ‘morally wrong’. Andreessen had to withdraw his tweet subsequently.

“Watching Silicon Valley crash into India’s Net neutrality debate is reminder of why the FB campaign went wrong here in the first place,” a twitterrati said.

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