Facebook’s Free Basics service was dealt a severe blow by India’s telecommunications regulator, which ruled on Monday that telecom service providers are prohibited from charging differently for data depending on the content or the application that the user is accessing.

The move follows strong protests by civil rights groups in the country against Free Basics, which was seen by its critics as creating a “walled garden” of select free websites, including Facebook, in the name of providing uncharged Web access to the poor.

The critics were also opposed to Airtel Zero, a platform launched by mobile operator Bharti Airtel so that app developers could offer so-called zero-rating apps with no data charges  to customers after paying the operator a fee.

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