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Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

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Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#91

Post by baybal2 »

baybal2 wrote: post #23
sgr wrote: post #7

I'm on Jio and paying $5 for 84 days. I get 1. Free voice calls 2. 100 SMS/ day 3. 1.5GB High speed data/ day (20+ MBPS)- Post which unlimited @ 64 Kbps 4. Subscription to Jio apps like Music/ Movies/ News The page shows pricing at $5.7, everyone I know has always received a discount voucher for Rs 50. https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans

100$ for 200GB 4g plan on China Mobile Pakistan

Update, the price went down recently.

You can get it for around $65 now https://www.zong.com.pk/internet/mobile-broadband/mbb-plans

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#92

Post by acd10j »

denzil_correa wrote: post #49

> Reliance has said little publicly about Jio, and even less about the potential for wide-scale data mining in a country where consumers have not, to date, made a big deal about online privacy. But top executives are clear on the opportunity. > “It’s called Deep Packet Inspection, and what you can do with the analytics of that is mind-boggling,” said a senior Reliance executive, referring to a practice that digs into…

This is why it very important to have HTTPS everywhere.

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#93

Post by kamaal »

sbmthakur wrote: post #81
kamaal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jio was never profitable from start. It won't be profitable anytime soon either. Please note this isn't first time Mukesh Ambani is dipping his feet into telecommunications. He did before too, but he lost that business to Anil Ambani. Apparently Jio is like his dream project.

> Jio was never profitable from start. It won't be profitable anytime soon either. I don't get this. Jio has been posting profits for a while[1]. 1. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/rel...

Its profit if you completely discount away the debt they have :) Or if you think they started at 0 investment. Or if you thinking on lines of completely discounting their initial capital 'investment' by not calling it Debt.

It is debt nevertheless.

Its like say took like a crore to start a business, and you are making like a profit of 50000 a month. Its profit, but it isn't exactly profit in an absolute sense, given you have to pay back 1 cr.

The thing about companies like Reliance is they can afford to do this. They have debt of $37 billion(https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/cash-rich-...) and they want to raise another $3 billion.

So yes, they post profits. Based on what your definition of profit is.

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#94

Post by rebyn »

ganarajpr wrote: post #25

About 5 months or so ago, one of my cousins called me ( video call on whatsapp ) from one of the snow covered mountains in the himalayan range. I know its not the top of mount everest and the place does see a decent tourist traffic, but still I was surprised by the fact that he could do a clear video call from that location. THIS, compared to me, sitting on a train ( not underground! ) just 10 miles away from London…

Have to disagree. Viettel (Vietnam) does offer 1GB a day for a monthly cost of $7. I have 3 bars minimum with LTE/4G on mountains (remote ones even) and islands.

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#95

Post by acd10j »

We should be very thankful with current Net Neutrality situation in India thanks to Facebook's ill conceived plan of Free Basics which led to Strict Net Neutrality Laws in India. This had prevented Platform lock for Jio's chat , movies etc platforms, which ironically is very beneficial to FB Messenger and Whatspp's growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#96

Post by kamaal »

rayiner wrote: post #88
HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you f@cking kidding me? There is literally no excuse for companies to charge us the way they do in the west at this point.

Leaving aside the fact that Jio seems to be an Uber-like play and the prices aren’t sustainable, there are several other problems with your argument. In the west, the cost of building and maintaining telecom networks is dominated by labor costs. Jio is paying Indian wages to lay and splice backhaul fiber, or to fix a downed line, not US or German wages. And even in the US or Germany, this isn’t minimum wage work—it r…

>>All else being equal, the cellular equipment will cost the same

I'm not sure where I read this. But I remember reading several years back, Airtel doesn't buy telecom equipment, it actually leases it, and pays for it as it goes. Which is why the prices were so low even for a new tech rollout like 4G.

Not sure if Jio has the same model.

>>Telecom infrastructure is like any other infrastructure—vastly more expensive to build in the west

Apart from land acquisition costs. India doesn't buy TBMs(Tunnel Boring Machines), from what I know. TBM's are a very capital expensive investment. But pace of building things is very slow in India compared to any such project in the west.

Having said that India does do frugal engineering well.

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#97

Post by colmvp »

TwiNNatioN wrote: post #32
sgr wrote: post #7

I'm on Jio and paying $5 for 84 days. I get 1. Free voice calls 2. 100 SMS/ day 3. 1.5GB High speed data/ day (20+ MBPS)- Post which unlimited @ 64 Kbps 4. Subscription to Jio apps like Music/ Movies/ News The page shows pricing at $5.7, everyone I know has always received a discount voucher for Rs 50. https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans

For 80$ per month in Canada: - Unlimited call + texts - 6GB per month And this is considered a good deal

Practically every product/service I can think of is more expensive here than other countries, namely the U.S. Yet the wages aren't exactly higher than other developed countries like the U.S. I don't really get it.

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#98

Post by rohit2412 »

kamaal wrote: post #96
rayiner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the fact that Jio seems to be an Uber-like play and the prices aren’t sustainable, there are several other problems with your argument. In the west, the cost of building and maintaining telecom networks is dominated by labor costs. Jio is paying Indian wages to lay and splice backhaul fiber, or to fix a downed line, not US or German wages. And even in the US or Germany, this isn’t minimum wage work—it r…

>>All else being equal, the cellular equipment will cost the same I'm not sure where I read this. But I remember reading several years back, Airtel doesn't buy telecom equipment, it actually leases it, and pays for it as it goes. Which is why the prices were so low even for a new tech rollout like 4G. Not sure if Jio has the same model. >>Telecom infrastructure is like any other infrastructure—vastly more expensive t…

Not sure where you got such wrong information by tunnel boring machines. They are widely used and are cheap (don't believe 1 billion$ per mile some businessman sells you). Both Delhi and Mumbai have used tunnel boring machines. Indian metro cost 30-100 million dollars per mile based on property prices, number of stations, and ratio of underground/overground. Don't know the breakdown, but have read that the major costs are stations. Tbm themselves are expendable. That is why Delhi and Mumbai ordered 19 and 17 tbm for a single phase and a single line.

http://delhimetrorail.com/press_reldetails.aspx?id=aIUb8nwzH...

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/mumbai-metro...

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#99

Post by virtualwhys »

TomK32 wrote: post #52
pnenp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to re-read to see 1.5 GB per day . Wow. I used to think we had it good in Austria (10GB for €10 per month ). But that is fantastic.

Also living in austria, paying on €7 for my 10GB per MONTH.

In Mexico with a Telcel pre-paid plan the max I can get is 5GB/month for 500 pesos (around $25 USD).

In India last year it was difficult as a foreigner to get Jio, so went with a couple of other providers (Airtel and Vodophone) -- not expensive at all, but coverage was dicey up in Rishikesh where I was staying.

France was the best wrt to price/data ratio, something like 20 Euros per month with Orange got me 40GB, that was really nice to have away from any big cities (Capbreton).

Re: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That

#100

Post by kamaal »

baybal2 wrote: post #89
kamaal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa! That's expensive. One of the reason for India's economic success in the digital age is awesome and affordable telecommunications infrastructure. You can't run a good start up ecosystem, or even a decent economic ecosystem without these things these days.

Jio is cheaper per Gigabyte, but they wouldn't let you spend all your quota in a day. That's the trick

They don't have to :)

Seriously, you need to watch like a HD movie everyday to exhaust that kind of quota. Unless you are flush with money and entirely jobless, you won't exactly be spending hours of your time everyday doing this.

But cheap plans let you use things like Google Maps, Collaborate over WhatsApp, Send recieve/picture videos etc. That kind of stuff is important for productivity for an economy. Especially for everyday business people this works wonders.

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