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Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

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141–150 of 183 posts

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

#141
post #5

This is bad. One executive at Jio already confirmed they use DPI to monitor traffic on their networks, and their apps, be it their MyJio, JioTV, JioNews, etc. ask for almost every permission there is. Also, it looks like the Zuck hasn't given up on his internet.org thing yet. He failed the first time, might as well join hands with a person who literally is the Government in India. Can't switch to Idea because they we…

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukesh_Ambani is the most powerful person in India. More important than the Prime minister or President. He decides who becomes the prime minister, what news people will consume, etc. He owns everything from oil refineries, infrastructure companies, telecom companies, power companies, entertainment companies, news companies etc. He is the wealthiest person in India and one of world's richest.

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

#142
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twice Mukesh Ambani has built telecom services that have lowered prices by an order of magnitude and greatly expanded coverage . Reliance Communications which Anil ran into the ground was built by Mukesh and changed the competitive landscape the first time around. Jio did it again and now India has the cheapest data in the world. I am struggling to understand what exactly is the problem and why is Jio a danger? Becau…

I am not sure why I am biting this, but here goes: If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter if you are a private entity or the Govt. I can't satisfy your curiosity because I too also sincerely don't know what flavor of undesirable behavior a monopoly creates but that they create bad behavior is as intuitive to me as is breathing to anyone else. A first person anecodote which doesn't…

> If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter if you are a private entity or the Govt.

The only thing worse than a monopoly is the non existence of the particular service.

Before Jio, reasonable speed Internet was non existent in rural India. The plans were priced so high that using Opera Mini with cloud compression was a reasonable decision, to save on data cost. I used to switch off 3G to ensure data doesn't get all consumed.

> But it took me 3 days of multiple hours on the phone, and I still couldn't access Hackernews, or reddit or even New York Times.

What do you mean by "not load"? Are you sure this was not something unrelated to Jio?

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

#143
post #5

This is bad. One executive at Jio already confirmed they use DPI to monitor traffic on their networks, and their apps, be it their MyJio, JioTV, JioNews, etc. ask for almost every permission there is. Also, it looks like the Zuck hasn't given up on his internet.org thing yet. He failed the first time, might as well join hands with a person who literally is the Government in India. Can't switch to Idea because they we…

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

Just a tangential story.

Few years back there was this 'news' that Mukesh Amabani's son had killed 2 person in a car accident. Now you can't find any link in any major news website

https://thewire.in/business/anant-ambani-memes-reliance-indu...

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

#144
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheltered white liberal whose only window to the world is CNN or the occasional poverty tourism to Asia when he's not doing CSS programming thinks this is still 19th century and he gets to decide who rules a country. Newsflash- India is a democracy. While you guys were making up Russia collusion and giving pulitzers over it to subvert your own democracy (yes I'm an Indian in India from where it's easy to see US polit…

No one has problem with Hinduism. The problem is with Hindutva & bhakts.

Can we stop with name-calling, please?

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio It's the Vodafone group CEO that's accusing TRAI of favoring Jio. They had a free run charging exorbitant data prices for a good time. No wonder these accusations are coming from Vodafone. > Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields This was fought in courts and eventually an international tribunal favored…

Honestly, Vodafone should be calling out Jio- they’re going to die because of it. Jio has had some eye opening advantages- Jio abused the stress test period for their network and essentially launched their service for free saying “join Jio, next few months free! (Fine print, this is technically a stress test.) The way the auction for spectrum was conducted was magical- they had a front company With impressive bureauc…

> What is sad is that the previous governments had done a truly impressive job of threading the economic needle when it came to designing a telecom market with competition.

I beg to differ. I do understand Jio was quite aggressive in expanding its services and TRAI should have been more vigilant. But that still doesn't prove that they were working together in order to establish a monopoly. The pre-Jio telecom market was good for the telecom companies but it was horrible for the end consumers. The data prices were simply too high.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Practically everyone would believe this story in real life. Such is the image of Mukesh Ambani in India.

He is not Warren Buffett type of billionaire, that is for sure.

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

#147
post #12

And India's fight against Facebook's walled garden, the Round 1 of which, it had won so admirably in 2016, now faces a setback. With this, and the crumbling of BSNL, a good part of India's telecom infrastrucure is now controlled by foreign players. Anyone who remembers Marc Andreesen's execrable remark on colonialism should be concerned.

Jio is building most of its 5G tech without involvement of foreign players.

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

#148
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Let's assume) You have followed US policy making, lobbying and stuff like how a coccus of ultra rich people/execs are actually running the Govt from behind the curtain and all that. So when you read all that that usually means the groups do that to different parties i.e maybe one group does that to the republicans and another to the democrats. (Now enter India) This guy alone pretty much controls the Govt of India a…

Sonia Gandhi literally uses Reliance Jets for her personal sojourns. You are dreaming if you think Mukesh Ambani and Congress are antithetical, in fact funnily i would argue he is closer to the Congress dispensation than BJP.

Where did OP say anything about Congress vs Ambani?

At best he hinted that Ambani is closer to Modi which is not that unexpected. Of course, no government has ever been 'unfriendly' to Ambani. They are all benefiting from one another.

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

#149
post #5

This is bad. One executive at Jio already confirmed they use DPI to monitor traffic on their networks, and their apps, be it their MyJio, JioTV, JioNews, etc. ask for almost every permission there is. Also, it looks like the Zuck hasn't given up on his internet.org thing yet. He failed the first time, might as well join hands with a person who literally is the Government in India. Can't switch to Idea because they we…

Yea was suprized the fact they were only boasting about their use of DPI as if it's something to be proud about.

And consumers and TRAI were giving Jio clueless looks or even cheering them.

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

#150
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why I am biting this, but here goes: If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter if you are a private entity or the Govt. I can't satisfy your curiosity because I too also sincerely don't know what flavor of undesirable behavior a monopoly creates but that they create bad behavior is as intuitive to me as is breathing to anyone else. A first person anecodote which doesn't…

> If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter if you are a private entity or the Govt. The only thing worse than a monopoly is the non existence of the particular service. Before Jio, reasonable speed Internet was non existent in rural India. The plans were priced so high that using Opera Mini with cloud compression was a reasonable decision, to save on data cost. I used to switch off 3…

"not load" - nothing happens and eventually connection timed out (unfortunately I don't have exact recollection if there was a message or just nothing happened). But I did research it and closest evidence I found that this was not a technical issue but deliberate blocking was from some discussion on Center for Internet Security: https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/reliance-jio-...
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