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India has the highest data usage per smartphone

thehindu.com

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Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#31

Post by H8crilA »

taneq wrote: post #18
harias wrote: post #7

For 6 dollars 50 cents, you get 1.5 GB/day for 91 days. Data-plans on offer: https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans And they manage to remain profitable (only-telco in India that reported profit this quarter) : https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/relian...

Holy crap, why am I paying $35/mo for 500mb? >.<

To counter-act this simply position yourself on the other end of American ridiculous data prices: buy $AMT, $SBAC. Those are cell tower REITs. They're up >900% and >2000% since the 2009 crisis.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#32

Post by gowthamgts12 »

axyjo wrote: post #2

I wonder how much of this is attributable to a rise in streaming (Amazon Prime, Hotstar, etc.) but a lack in investment for fixed-line internet.

I can vouch for this. Currently, living in Chennai and we have 1Gbps connection for 2000INR per month where as in my native you'll get 24Mbps for the same amount.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#33

Post by Wohlf »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Can someone explain why in countries with established infrastructure, automation and cheaper capital cost (albeit higher labor cost) the internet cost is around 10-20x more than in India? Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...

Because labor costs are by far the biggest expense for companies.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#34

Post by rsynnott »

Zarathustra_ wrote: post #5

This is surely due to cost of data. It baffles me that we have so much regulation and so many entrenched players that there is little room for competition, leading to higher prices. The question is, how do you prevent the natural monopolies of a finite resource (like wireless spectrum)? The first thing I could think of is stopping the Sprint - T-Mobile merger, but I'm not confident Sprint will keep its head above wat…

Not just, I suspect. Data is cheap in other countries; there's probably more at work here.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#35

Post by jbarham »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Can someone explain why in countries with established infrastructure, automation and cheaper capital cost (albeit higher labor cost) the internet cost is around 10-20x more than in India? Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...

Mobile data in Canada is notoriously expensive. The official justification is that it's a large, sparsely populated country. The actual explanation is regulatory capture by a cozy/corrupt domestic oligopoly that has successfully lobbied the government to stop foreign competitors.

Like Canada, Australia is also a very large, sparsely populated country but mobile data is fast and reasonably priced (e.g., https://www.aldimobile.com.au/plans/value-packs/, which I use).

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#36

Post by sound1 »

purplex wrote: post #23
totaldude87 wrote: post #3

Jio revolution is the main reason for this, after Jio almost every other vendor is giving you 30Gb(1Gb per day) for $5-6 , no wonder, there is a %30-40 utilization of data. Majority of this utilization would be on Streaming, Torrent downloads etc etc, Also to note that , many of the calls made in India are VOLTE calls..

I totally agree with you. Even though Jio has blocked many torrent website, still people find holes to download the content. Normally people subscribe for the 1 or 1.5 GB/day plan, which was earlier very much affordable compared to other operators. Not others too have reduced their prices to stay in competition. One advantage is that Jio was totally new to the market so they started with 4G networks directly. The con…

> Even though Jio has blocked many torrent website, still people find holes to download the content.

In my experience, a lot of people I know switched streaming services instead of torrents. Amazon prime and Hoststar are quite affordable and have decent content now a days and people generally don't bother with the torrents as much as they did a few years ago.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#37

Post by indogooner »

ignoramous wrote: post #27
totaldude87 wrote: post #3

Jio revolution is the main reason for this, after Jio almost every other vendor is giving you 30Gb(1Gb per day) for $5-6 , no wonder, there is a %30-40 utilization of data. Majority of this utilization would be on Streaming, Torrent downloads etc etc, Also to note that , many of the calls made in India are VOLTE calls..

Jio censors the web of its own volition including censoring torrents and porn websites [0]. And it is no secret that it does deep packet inspection and kind of has an extensive footprint via its numerous apps that I'd presume gather how much ever data that they can abt its customers. [0] This has interestingly resulted in folks using Helo, Telegram et al to share pirated content and porn.

why would WhatsApp not work for this given it is so popular?

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#38

Post by krzyk »

rocgf wrote: post #26
dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Can someone explain why in countries with established infrastructure, automation and cheaper capital cost (albeit higher labor cost) the internet cost is around 10-20x more than in India? Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...

Not sure this applies to everywhere, but I can talk about Romania (Eastern Europe) vs. Western Europe. Romania has some of the best Internet in the world; as far as I recall, you can get 1Gbps for like 10-15 dollars in most non-rural areas. I think that's partly because of the huge amount of competition that was present in the early 00s, when we had a ridiculous amount of ISPs per city, and partly because all the cab…

And also because there was almost no infrastructure to begin with. So when one was created it went straight to fiber, while the western countries still got plenty of copper.

Similar thing in Poland (although our network is in worse condition than in Romania, but we still can have 1 Gbps for about 18 USD, even in some rural areas like mine :).

I think this is quite similar to the banking sector, we have most of the banks internet ready, some of them are are mostly internet, with very few brick and mortar places. When my colleague went to Switzerland he was shocked how the banks there force one to visit them personally to do even basic stuff (at least in the beginning - in Poland I can create banking account without leaving my home, I just need to wait for package to sign in front of a courier) - and have crappy websites.

This is also a leftover of the early internet migration, now they don't have enough incentive to do it better.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#40

Post by skybrian »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Can someone explain why in countries with established infrastructure, automation and cheaper capital cost (albeit higher labor cost) the internet cost is around 10-20x more than in India? Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...

Total guess, but it seems like labor cost will do it? It drives up acquisition costs for getting customers. Combine with many customers not being very motivated to reduce costs, which both increases acquisition costs and reduces the downside from charging more.
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