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Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

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Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#81

Post by a-ve »

TriNetra wrote: post #72
a-ve wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mainly due to his disregard for any rules that may exist. The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio: https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone-gro... Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields: https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas-shift... They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it: h…

You are over-blowing his control: My quick search brings following two things which is opposite to what this thread is claiming. 1. Reliance Jio may not be pleased with govt's spectrum moratorium to telcos: https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance-ji... 2. India Trying to Stop Reliance From Selling Assets, Times Says: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to-stop...

Telecoms in India are in a tremendous amount of debt. So much so, Vodafone and Idea had to merge but still they have immense financial problems. They are asking for the moratorium because Jio gave away their services for free, undercutting every player there is and the telecom regulator did nothing about it. WRT your first link, it was posted on November 21, 2019. This year the Supreme Court ordered the telecoms to pay their dues: https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-news/sc...

As to your second link (Dec 23, 2019), yes, the Govt. did try to stop the 20% sale to Aramco, but "Aramco officials and bankers on the deal have been working at Reliance’s offices in Mumbai" says otherwise: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance-...

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#82

Post by rgrs »

webmobdev wrote: post #37
missedthecue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(Bad for us consumers ofcourse.) explain?

- They've crippled the indian telecom industry by driving out many competitors through their anti-competitive behaviour of offering FREE services for nearly a year under the guise of "testing" their network. They were aided in this by the government who ignored the protests from the other players. - Then they offered services for very LOW prices. - Once the competitors were driven out, they've RAISED prices. And are…

Source please? Are these your opinions or do you have articles (not blogs or tweets) to support your claims?

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#83

Post by econ_nut »

ddrt wrote: post #52
kumarvvr wrote: post #14

This is too much control for one company. This is really bad for democracy. JIO is deeply embedded into the rural populace. Exactly the ones who are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns. And facebook just bought a key to the gates.

Isn’t their leader an extreme nationalist? How does it get worse than that?

You know, I would argue India is a much more functional democracy than USA at the moment. Unfortunately, it isn't because India has suddenly become more democratic. Fortunately, we are at least not committing guillotine-level crimes. For example, we don't have the biggest businesses being bailed out while 20+ million people are simultaneously unemployed. But let us leave that aside for a minute.

People make these dire predictions like "Well.. you know, now that India has an extreme nationalist as the leader, he will be in power forever and India will soon exterminate non-Hindus..how does it get worse than that?" etc. Except, the population growth rate of non-Hindus has been higher even when counted very recently [1]. I suppose it is much easier to have opinions which are based on nothing but more opinions, rather than based on facts.

>>How does it get worse than that?

Here is how. We can overthrow the extreme nationalist leader via an election. If things get really dire, sometimes these overbearing folks actually get assassinated. We cannot even kick out WhatsApp from the country, let alone assassinate Mark Z (which I would argue is good not just for India, but for the entire planet).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth#India

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#84

Post by rgrs »

djdjs wrote: post #3

The fact that Zuckerberg and Facebook are making this bet, using the data they have, suggests that the Modi era will continue for quite a while. Ambani’s fortunes are closely tied to Modi. This is as much a political statement as a financial one.

> Ambani’s fortunes are closely tied to Modi.

Source please? Why should i believe a new poster with such randomly typed username?

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#85

Post by nsenifty »

statguy wrote: post #48
Fiveplus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambani owns jack shit. These kind of low denominator strawmans do not lead to a healthy discussion. Please keep it to yourself or go to a community that welcomes it.

I will give you a datapoint, among many. The Indian govt. recently awarded a critical contract for modernizing the Indian Air Force to a company owned by Anil Ambani who is the brother of Mukesh Ambani, owner of Jio. The Anil Ambani (who has since declared bankruptcy) company had zero experience in defence or aeronautics, yet it was chosen over India's state owned HAL which has decades of aeronautical expertise.

This is incorrect. You are mixing two separate (but related) things.

Under the terms of the original Rafale deal[1], HAL was supposed to manufacture/assemble Rafale aircraft in India. This deal never materialized.

A new deal was made under whose terms, Dassault and others were to supply 36 Rafale aircraft in fly-away condition in return to which, they were to invest 50% of the cost of the deal (or about €3.9 billion) back in India, under an offset clause.

Of this €3.9 billion, €100 million was awarded [2] to Dassault Reliance Aviation limited as an offset contract to manufacture components for a passenger aircraft (Dassault Falcon 2000). This was a decision by Dassault, not the Government of India.

There were about 30 offset partners among which Reliance was one. This contract was worth about 3% of the entire investment under the offset clause.

So Reliance was not "chosen over" HAL.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_MRCA_competition

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafale_deal_controversy

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#86

Post by kumarvvr »

lwb wrote: post #60
ravenstine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as enough people submit to the "muh private company" idea, this will only get worse.

Are you suggesting that we shouldn't have private companies?

No, what I think he is suggesting is that everything private companies do is defended to the extreme, just becasuse the alternative of having govt. controlled entities is undesirable.

Even I agree, there is too much worship of capitalist and free market structures.

There ought to be a good balance between free market and govt. regulations, where public interests in protected.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#87

Post by nr152522 »

ra7 wrote: post #38
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a person who literally is the Government in India Out of the loop: can you clarify what you mean by this?

I guess they mean Mukesh Ambani, who owns Jio and is the richest person in Asia, is a powerful player in Indian politics.

I believe Jack Ma is now the richest man in Asia. In fact, it’s probably really Ayatollah Khamenei :/

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#88

Post by webmobdev »

rgrs wrote: post #82
webmobdev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- They've crippled the indian telecom industry by driving out many competitors through their anti-competitive behaviour of offering FREE services for nearly a year under the guise of "testing" their network. They were aided in this by the government who ignored the protests from the other players. - Then they offered services for very LOW prices. - Once the competitors were driven out, they've RAISED prices. And are…

Source please? Are these your opinions or do you have articles (not blogs or tweets) to support your claims?

Sorry, can't help you with your scrubbing. You can Google for it.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#89

Post by vegiraghav »

fermienrico wrote: post #61
vegiraghav wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our leader is not an extremist nationalist. Next.

This is not a way to respond on HN. Please be respectful.

May be its just me, but I think calling a democratically elected leader of the most diverse country in the world, an extremist, is more disrespectful.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#90

Post by blueblisters »

vegiraghav wrote: post #56
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a person who literally is the Government in India Out of the loop: can you clarify what you mean by this?

Well Mukesh Ambani with a net worth of $50 billion, is the son of Dirubhai Ambani. Like father son too has all political parties in his pockets, be it the congress or BJP or other parties in India. Word is since Modi didnt coorperate in something with Mukesh, he literally sabotaged an alliance they had in the state of Maharashtra, to screw Modi's party over and stiched up an alliance of political rivals.

It's one thing of accusing him of cronyism. It's another to accuse him of swaying elections for political convenience.
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