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India has the highest data usage per smartphone

thehindu.com

241–250 of 262 posts

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#241

This is so true. My mom watches all her Serials, news and funny vids in her mobile. Our TV is deserted now! Jio forced everyone to bring down the prices. Now all those companies have begun posting quarterly losses and they don't have a humungous cash cow like jio. This is not gonna end well.

> they don't have a humungous cash cow like jio What is Jio's cash cow?

Jio is basically a part of Reliance conglomerate which made it's wealth in Oil business.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#243
post #38
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

Pretty sure there were phone lines just like everywhere. Maybe no cable tho?

Back in Lithuania cable was installed everywhere in early 90s, but cable internet didn’t catch on.

P.S. saw an ad here the other day - €3/week for 1TB of LTE data.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#244

This is so true. My mom watches all her Serials, news and funny vids in her mobile. Our TV is deserted now! Jio forced everyone to bring down the prices. Now all those companies have begun posting quarterly losses and they don't have a humungous cash cow like jio. This is not gonna end well.

This is exactly going well. Those companies had formed some sort of a cartel and were bleeding people (especially the poor folks) with their high prices. As a student in 2015, I'd never imagined having a data enabled on my Vodafone Sim. But then things changed for good.

Yes but when the competition is completely demolished by Jio they can setup the prices as they please. That's the problem. I don't see the govt doing anything to prevent complete monopoly. It benefits you immediately but not in the future.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#245

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 servic…

We're paying too much in America. Thats mostly because of population density and sunk labor costs for building the infrastructure. Many parts of US are so sparsely populated that the densely populated regions have to subsidize some of the costs of buildding the infrastrcuture in those regions. Canada is the worst when it comes to mobile services because they don't have cities like New York to subsidize the sparse reg…

If you look to Europe that does not hold. Sparse and mountainous countries like Sweden, Finland and Austria are the cheaper ones. It seems that it depends more on the population count of a country.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#246
post #35

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.al…

Please tell them about Sweden, Romania, Finland - all sparsely populated by faster and cheaper data rates.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#247
Don't compare your American plans, most of the cities in India are facing severe water shortage and temperature is rising every year. There are still power cuts even in the largest cities. Air quality is worse, just look at the AQI index.

All this is because of mismanagement and lack of effective regulation, which Jio is a byproduct of.

No wonder it doesn't exist in America.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mainly depends on the location. In the denser areas of the metros, speed is lower (depends on time of the day as well). But the coverage across the India landmass is pretty good. I was streaming netflix hd on mobile, while traveling to another city on a bus.

I think he is not asking about Jio but the local service provider.

No Jio, it’s cheaper to have a sustainable high speed connection for one person, but a lot more capital intensive for lots of people.

In the UK you can buy a 200mbps connection, but at peak times in the evening it slows to about 10mbps since they don’t have the capacity.

I suppose they point is peak time usage.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 grow…

> Jio had a lot of money to use to grab the customers by offering free deals How do you make money offering free deals?

I believe they are trying to make money out of other services by commoditizing internet. It seems unlikely that this aggressive pricing is to elbow out of the competitors because in this age, the tech companies normally have short-lived monopoly and long bets don't make much sense.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#250

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 servic…

What gave so much confidence to Jio to discount that much? Did their flavor of party come to power during that time? Also, India would have better date quality if market was open to foreign players without requiring Indian stakes. India has very high density in many areas where these kind of data rates are possible and we all would be on 1gbps connections

> What gave so much confidence to Jio to discount that much? Did their flavor of party come to power during that time?

Not sure what kind of conspiracy you're thinking of. Jio is actually funded through Debt financing. Many Indian and non-Indian banks have given huge loans to Jio[1][2].

1.https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/rel...

2. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/financ...

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