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India has the highest data usage per smartphone

thehindu.com

101–110 of 262 posts

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#101

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 they have fixed-line internet infrastructure they want to sell you too.

Break apart the fixed line business from the wireless business and you’ll see one crush the other.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#103
Jio has set the entire market on fire. I remember 3 Years back I was paying Rs. 1000/month @ 1Mbps unlimited to my local broadband service provider. Today the same service provider is offering me unlimited data @ 50Mbps without change in cost!

Edit: Also, the entire network is ipv6 enabled from the beginning. India went from white to green within months on ipv6 graph at

https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#104

and we arent even close to peaking. The biggest telcos in India havent even started content plays. Netflix just entered India. And we still have HALF A BILLION people not on the internet. This is in an environment with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy (that cannot be reversed by the govt), a govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay and perhap…

> govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay

UPI or Unified Payments Interface. I cannot stress how innovative this payment mode is.

* No risk of fraud (can't approve a transaction without a PIN on your mobile) - fraud as in card cloning, malware infected websites running off with card details. Does not preclude social engineering where users fall into clever tricks.

* no privacy issues yet (money is directly debited from account without a mastercard/visa involved)

* anyone can make a UPI app (all banks have their own, Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe etc)

* no cards to duplicate

* you can manage multiple VPAs on one account, so I can create different identities for different purposes all debiting money from one account.

Exceptions - UPI still doesn't support recurring payments or subscriptions and some other cases.

But as a regular consumer, I find plastic outdated. I've never used WeChat/AliPay so can't comment on that but the only time I have to use a credit card is when I have to pay international companies (DO, GSuite etc) in USD/EUR.

EDIT - expanded on kinds of fraud.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#105
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.al…

I remember visiting Canada (this was many years ago) and looking into local prepaid SIM cards. The cost of roaming data was actually cheaper than the data pricing on the local prepaid SIM cards...

It’s very embarrassing as a Canadian when foreigners visit and do things with their phones here that I wouldn’t dream of doing myself on a local plan.

Time for me to email my MP tonight.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#106

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?

Broadly, no. I know the other reply said:

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

But that's affordable for a very thin slice of the population. Remember that India's average nominal income, i.e., not PPP-adjusted, is $140 per month. Also, this only works in the better-off areas of the "major cities" (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and similar) -- there's a lot of the population who live outside these cities.

Considering local factors, wired internet is a marker of being upper middle class, or even 'rich', and living in a great residential area in a top-tier city.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#108
post #11

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..

Can Jio make money at these prices? Or is Reliance subsidizing Jio (and if so, how heavily?)

Jio's business model is not exclusively dependent on direct revenue from consumers. It includes content play on films, videos, music, news + subsequent ads. They've also indicated that they will be doing deep packet inspection [1] on data passing through their network to presumably build ad profiles of it's users.

[1] https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio/from-bi...

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#109

and we arent even close to peaking. The biggest telcos in India havent even started content plays. Netflix just entered India. And we still have HALF A BILLION people not on the internet. This is in an environment with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy (that cannot be reversed by the govt), a govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay and perhap…

I thought I recall hearing someone say that cellphone plans and rates are much more reasonable there. That it's not uncommon for companies to actually compete to lower prices. Is that true?

I pay Rs150 ($2.16 USD - maybe can buy a hotdog at Costco with some spare change) per month (stress the Month.. ) and get 1.5 GB per day (yes, that's data per day) .

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#110
post #104

and we arent even close to peaking. The biggest telcos in India havent even started content plays. Netflix just entered India. And we still have HALF A BILLION people not on the internet. This is in an environment with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy (that cannot be reversed by the govt), a govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay and perhap…

> govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay UPI or Unified Payments Interface. I cannot stress how innovative this payment mode is. * No risk of fraud (can't approve a transaction without a PIN on your mobile) - fraud as in card cloning, malware infected websites running off with card details. Does not preclude social engineering where users fall into clever tricks. *…

> no privacy issues yet (money is directly debited from account without a mastercard/visa involved)

Isn’t Aadhar (fingerprints + iris scan) needed to have a bank account? If yes, then it’s a bit disingenuous to say there are no privacy issues.

> No risk of fraud

A cursory search will show plenty of press articles re UPI fraud. For instance [1].

[1] https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/personal-finance/...

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