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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

#81

Post by vinay_ys »

sound1 wrote: post #36
purplex wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except for Netflix which is $8/month, rest of the streaming services are very cheap. Hotstar has content from HBO, Showtime etc. Amazon Prime is ok. There are lots of Indian streaming services with Indian content. A lot of data consumption in India is video content hosted within India.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#82

Post by returnInfinity »

2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #77

Do most Indians have good internet access at home? As in, is a portion of this accounting for home-usage which is replaced by a home connection in other countries?

35$ for 1TB up/down, 150 Mbps. Available in all major cities. Good enough?

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#83

Post by reroute1 »

justaguyhere wrote: post #70

Americans are going to be livid when they learn how cheap data plans are in India. The reason this works is free market, unlike the US where the likes of Comcast have monopoly in the regions they operate. Hasan Minhaj did a show this week on Netflix, you should watch it - he explains pretty well how horrible Comcast like companies are.

Eh, Verizon just offered unlimited data for free for my whole family.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#84

Post by foobardev »

2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #77

Do most Indians have good internet access at home? As in, is a portion of this accounting for home-usage which is replaced by a home connection in other countries?

In major metro cities fiber to home with >50 Mbps is common. Tier 2 cities and below have to depend on the state owned telecom provider BSNL who offers 2 - 10Mbps or cellular internet.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#85

Post by LyndsySimon »

Ugh.

I live in Arkansas, and my AT&T bill this month is $410. Granted, about $150 of that are payment plans for devices, but still. The base rate plan is $110, and there's a $20-30 per line fee for four separate lines.

I have an iPad Pro 11" LTE and an iPhone X, my wife has an S10+, and I handed down my 6th Gen iPad LTE to my 10-year-old. It's a lot more than "needed", and our aggregate data usage is 30+ GB/month, but still. The difference in cost is staggering.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#86

Post by belltaco »

the_duke wrote: post #43
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...

Comparing dollar prices in isolation makes almost no sense. You need to at least look at average/median monthly income and compare via some normalized metric, like a variant of Purchasing Power Parity [1] . Even if you do this, comparisons are hard. Completely different economies, market structures and target groups, subsidies, taxation, regulation, etc can all have a big effect. Looking at India, it has a GDP per Ca…

>Looking at India, it has a GDP per Capita that's 1/8 of the US

Okay, then lets multiply Indian prices by 8.

Someone up the thread quoted this:

>For 6 dollars 50 cents, you get 1.5 GB/day for 91 days.

Where in the US can I get 1.5GB/day for 91 days for $52 ?

Before someone talks about congestion, this is India, with 1.3 Billion people and "third world" infrastructure. If that kind of bandwidth can be provided to that many folks where people are routinely using it to watch TV channels (see Jio TV), why can't we do it here? I think congestion and data caps are just excuses to wring more money.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#87

Post by KumarAseem »

Roritharr wrote: post #59
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 is fascinating. I once held a talk at an event where their Interim CISO Karsten Nohl was also speaking. The way Jio was built and what challenges they faced trying to build a gigantic mobile operator from scratch and building it secure from day one are a story i'd like to read a book about, but I'm already glad he held a talk about it. The most interesting part was their realization that there was nearly no "new…

They had the advantage that they did not have any legacy systems to take care off. All the other operators have to take care of 2G and 3G network supporting infra along with putting in investment for 4G. So, Jio had a lot of money to use to grab the customers by offering free deals. They applied the approach of cannibalistic business growth. Also, there network is not good anymore now, as the subscriber base has grown. I have seen cross connects happening which used to happen in the days of landlines. Cross-connect, not sure if all know it by the same name, is when you call a number and you get connected to some other number. I have never faced this with other providers like Airtel, Idea and Vodafone in 13+ years of mobile phone usage. Jio is now in the same league as others, and is actually bad at the customer front level when compared to Airtel and Vodafone+Idea. This is from my own experience and of those in the close circle.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#89

Post by shakna »

belltaco wrote: post #80
justaguyhere wrote: post #70

Americans are going to be livid when they learn how cheap data plans are in India. The reason this works is free market, unlike the US where the likes of Comcast have monopoly in the regions they operate. Hasan Minhaj did a show this week on Netflix, you should watch it - he explains pretty well how horrible Comcast like companies are.

Probably true, but how does that jive with the perception that it was all triggered by below-cost discounts from the likes of Jio to grab market share at a huge loss, and that it's not sustainable?

Jio don't seem to be operating at a loss [0] at all. From what I can see of the numbers it seems sustainable, though their fibre offerings muddy the waters a bit.

[0] https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/relian...

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#90

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

I'm from India. I can confirm this. It's because unlimited LTE data costs about rs700 per month or 10 dollars. It can be spotty at times - but it works. Mobile is by far the most used form factor. Search for "Jio" on your app store and you'll see a variety of apps like JioTV, JioCinema, JioNews etc.. That means free news, live tv and movies all for the price of a cell phone subscription. Jio is the name of the service provider. No surprise India has the highest data use - there's almost no need to buy a TV anymore to watch content. You could also imagine why it might be hard for Netflix, Spotify and Prime movies to compete in India - because those services are bundled out of the box (no secret pay walls and great quality) for the price of your cell service. The mobile revolution in India wasn't about the phone - it was about access to fast mobile data. India has the lead on this one. We're paying too much in America.
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