I don't know about other countries but in India it is fairly simple to open one for a company (they are called FCNR accounts). I don't see any government having issues with foreign income making its way to local businesses.
When I walk into the casinos, I know the odds of each game and know there is a possibility of losing my money. However if the casino rigs the machines to reduce my odds, then it isn't a fair game anymore and now goes into the realm of cheating.
But as an Indian consumer, I have happy that I have a choice and I believe in the long run the more open Indian market would prove more beneficial to local businesses.
Their market caps notwithstanding - Alibaba, Didi Kuaidi and Baidu are not global companies. India already has one of the largest global ad networks outside of Google i.e. InMobi and I believe over the next 20 years, you'll see much more truly global Internet companies started out of India vs. China.
A friend of mine was on Free Basics. She found out only when she tried to navigate to a video outside of Facebook from a link that she clicked on Facebook and was prompted to purchase a data plan.
The proposal to regulate VoIP apps is before TRAI only because of lobbying by telcos who are still in denial over the world moving towards data and want to hold onto their voice call revenues.
I'm not sure what purpose licensing will serve from a law enforcement perspective. Banning VoIP apps that refuse to apply for a license will be like playing whack-a-mole as people can easily add a VPN to get around it or the service can intelligently route traffic to get around the ban.
I don't believe they ever had any intention of getting the poor online. They have so far never released ANY data regarding how many of the users of Free Basics are first time Internet users despite it being one of the top demands of critics of the Free Basics program. Some independent third party analysis suggest that the overwhelming majority of users of Free Basics are existing Internet users, many of them who have no idea they are on Free Basics.
Reliance (the telco that Facebook has partnered with) doesn't advertise the Free Basics program as "access for the poor" but as "Free Facebook" and doesn't even mention the additional websites available for free on Free Basics.
My guess is that with Free Basics rolled out in 36 countries without any issues, Facebook never expected any opposition.
The new regulations by TRAI does not mention anything about regulation of voice apps (or about slow/fast lanes).
I think you have misinterpreted the comment by SaveTheInternet.in. What they're saying is that while differential pricing has been dealt with in accordance with NN principles, there are two more battles which are going to be fought i.e. i. Defeating the proposal to regulate voice apps ii. Ensuring that no slow/fast lanes are there on the Internet.
Its a "yes, we won a major battle but the war is not over yet" caution. Not an indictment on what TRAI is going to do for voice apps & slow/fast lanes.
Its a step in the right direction. TRAI was only deciding on differential pricing not slow/fast lanes and currently no ISPs are implementing slow/fast lanes whereas differential pricing (i.e. free plans for Facebook, Whatsapp, their own shitty apps etc) were all over.
Maybe our social circles are different :). Snapchat has high resolution pictures & videos, filters, adding captions, adding emoji to pictures, drawing stuff on it. Whatsapp photos and videos functionality is just barely better than MMS.
Instagram is pretty huge in India already. It has about 6M monthly active users and is installed on almost everyone in my age group's (25-35) phones.
Snapchat on the other hand, most people won't know about it. However, I bet its drastically going to change in two years. Whatsapp is basically an SMS replacement - it lacks media rich features and as mobile internet speeds improve in India, people will gravitate towards apps such as Snapchat.
They should just use their containers to advertise the app and offer a small discount (10% or so) and then Doordash/Grubhub becomes a marketing channel for their app. Thats what I'd do.