India, Jio, and the Four Internets • Hacker News Board

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#11

Post by chvid » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

The hypocrisy of this:

- Non-U.S. citizens operate with a high degree of freedom online, although there are minimal restrictions on the collection of the data generated from doing so by private companies or the U.S. government.

- Non-U.S. companies are free to operate in the United States without restriction, and in other countries that follow the U.S.’s approach.

Is really through the roof given how the same site just recently argued how TikTok must either be sold to the US or prohibited in this:

https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/

The sad thruth is that the US is ok with a free internet as long as it is completely ruled by American companies and by extension the American surveillance state. If anything challenges that the piper will soon play a different tune.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#12

Post by tchalla » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

Jio monopoly is a series of convenient regulations tailored to them over the last decade [0].
[0] https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/government-helping-reli...

I know the article is paywalled but it's the most comprehensive piece on the matter

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#13

Post by ytdytvhxgydvhh » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

Ben says:

“Any company that wishes to achieve scale needs to do so in its home market first, before going abroad”

Not really sure why this would be the case. Spotify didn’t do this did they?

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#14

Post by yalogin » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

hesarenu wrote: post #2

Jio is the only option for a huge number of Indians - I don't how the author got this impression. There are many other players Airtel,idea even bsnl. The offers are more or less similar. Anyone can switch or use both. My main number is on Airtel and i use jio as well.

Airtel used to be the biggest player and in a few short years it has dwindled to 35% customer base of Jio. The rest of them are tiny compared to even Airtel. So sure you have options for now, but its increasingly looking like there won't be in the future.

Also the original statement that Jio is the only option for a majority of Indians is true because a lot of people only joined the mobile revolution because of Jio.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#15

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

hesarenu wrote: post #2

Jio is the only option for a huge number of Indians - I don't how the author got this impression. There are many other players Airtel,idea even bsnl. The offers are more or less similar. Anyone can switch or use both. My main number is on Airtel and i use jio as well.

[deleted]

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#16

Post by taobility » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

There is no four Internets, only three: US Internets, China Internet and the other.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#17

Post by victor106 » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

hesarenu wrote: post #2

Jio is the only option for a huge number of Indians - I don't how the author got this impression. There are many other players Airtel,idea even bsnl. The offers are more or less similar. Anyone can switch or use both. My main number is on Airtel and i use jio as well.

The monopoly of Jio is extremely bad for India.

It's an open secret that the Ambani's have significant control over most politicians and political parties in India.

Any of the big tech companies who wish to make a significant presence in India have to go through Jio.

The monies that Facebook and Google spent buying stakes in Jio is to assure them that their operations wont be hurt.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#18

Post by flak48 » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

rudiv wrote: post #7

The success of Jio in great part is down to the government retroactively converting their spectrum licenses to GSM.

Yep if anything I hope the Ambani family's escapades with Jio doesn't whitewash their deserved reputation as perhaps the most corrupt company in India.

For those not aware, Jio itself came into being via a scam. (That the comment I replied to is alluding to). The TL;DR is Reliance acquired a company that had only managed to win an Internet Service Provider license auction (that too in a dubious manner [1], [2])

Then Reliance 'convinced' the government to let them convert the license [3] to allow them to provide voice services as well, for a paltry fee (the amount they paid was set in 2001 and did not account for inflation over 12 years - which is pretty significant in India). Thus Jio was able to become a full blown 4G cellular provider at a fraction of the cost of competitors like Vodafone, Airtel etc.

[1] https://scroll.in/article/802277/why-its-crucial-for-apex-co...

[2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/dot-re...

[3] https://scroll.in/article/802282/how-many-committees-does-it...

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#19

Post by wadkar » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

taobility wrote: post #16

There is no four Internets, only three: US Internets, China Internet and the other.

TFA proposes that Jio/India will be the fourth one - or at least that's what I understood from the post.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#20

Post by wadkar » Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

bigpumpkin wrote: post #4

"Today friends, I have great pride in announcing that Jio has designed and developed a complete 5G solution from scratch. This will enable us to launch a world-class 5G service in India using 100% homegrown technology and solution. " Wow, that's amazing. Maybe the US and the UK can also import this 5G tech in our networks? I'm getting tired of ATT's fake 5GE.

I would wait until they get field trials and do a launch in India (which is what Jio plans anyways). I think if they can do it at India scale and complexity - they can pretty much do it anywhere in the world. India scale is obvious - large geography and relatively dense population. Complexity because of unreliability of basic infrastructure (like guaranteed power supply, people digging over your network pipeline etc.)

I am usually a skeptic when it comes to claims made by companies in the Indian context, for example, my Jio connection is spotty at best in tier 2 city and very much a PITA if I go in the rural areas where the state owned BSNL is still the winner.