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India, Jio, and the Four Internets

stratechery.com

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Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chvid wrote: post #11

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 ju…

> hypocrisy

I don't see hypocrisy. One is a statement on how things are. The other how the author thinks it should be.

The U.S. market is virtually ungated to new entrants, domestic or foreign. The author believes some gates should exist, specifically, with respect to TikTok.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#32

Post by [deleted] »

signal11 wrote: post #22
varbhat wrote: post #5

Back in 2015, costs for internet were not cheap,here in India. There were many who couldn't afford (including me).In those days(2015), I used to be on 2KBps network(You read it right, kilobytes per second). It was Idea Cellular's ₹68 2G plan(USD 0.91) where it provided 1Gigabyte of data for month. 3G plans were costlier. There was no 4G until Nov/Dec of 2015 when Airtel introduced 4G(it was hyped,but it was also cost…

Jio’s offer is really good on paper, but it’s got to be one of the slowest 4G networks I’ve used when I tried it in February. Anyone know if this is because of a lack of competition (there’s effectively one other serious player left in the Indian telco market right now), or capacity constraints?

[deleted]

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#33

Post by nktsg »

Barrin92 wrote: post #8

I feel like every Stratechery piece on Europe is just plain bashing because Ben Thompson is allergic to regulation. Somehow extrapolating from one Indian company, Jio, to some sort of global vision of an internet while completely disregarding the European continent (which in pure market value obviously still is large) just seems like bad faith. Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm…

Nicely put. I think the idea of disruptive innovation by technology is very much influenced by the industrial revolution in the west. And only now is that we've started to discuss in public domain the consequences of it on nature and our species. Sadly, most of the Indian entrepreneurs today are still influenced by the Western model of technical innovation and disruption having blind spots about how to use technology to solve the local issues.

I grew up in a modest town in India and have been working in the tech domain. But it deeply upsets me that technology is not effectively used in here to solve the most fundamental issue that is of access to education, healthcare and electricity. Most of the population in India doesn't even have the proper education to understand the implications of technology.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#35

Post by screye »

Jio has kind of been like early Google, in that, at the point at which it revolutionized the industry, it was a monopoly that was welcomed by the masses.

The quality of service they offered was just so much better than a lot of places, that it didn't make sense to use anything else. A lot of places in India had BSNL which was nothing short of terrible.

It pushed the other private players to offer competitive services, and it honestly still feels nothing like a monopoly. (Jio has a 30% share)

Not disregarding the rest of the points against it, but adding some context.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#36

Post by rendall »

RestlessMind wrote: post #24
Barrin92 wrote: post #8

I feel like every Stratechery piece on Europe is just plain bashing because Ben Thompson is allergic to regulation. Somehow extrapolating from one Indian company, Jio, to some sort of global vision of an internet while completely disregarding the European continent (which in pure market value obviously still is large) just seems like bad faith. Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm…

> We need an internet that works for its citizens and members, and on that front I have still more trust in the old continent I broadly agree with the spirit of this line. But I fail to see how Europe is achieving that. Can you share a few specific (and meaningful) examples of how European approach has created an outcome which works better for its citizens and members? So far from what I have seen, European companies…

"the key regulatory initiatives either haven't proven effective in curbing US giants' powers (eg. GDPR)"

Would you mind expanding on that? Perhaps you have information that I do not, but from what I understand, large US tech companies with a presence in Europe do abide by the GDPR, which includes data privacy audits and large fines for non-compliance.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#37

Post by tw04 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #8

I feel like every Stratechery piece on Europe is just plain bashing because Ben Thompson is allergic to regulation. Somehow extrapolating from one Indian company, Jio, to some sort of global vision of an internet while completely disregarding the European continent (which in pure market value obviously still is large) just seems like bad faith. Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm…

And completely ignores the fact that internet penetration is mediocre at best, speed:price is horrendous compared to the nordic countries, and it's because of LACK of regulation. Had the US government enforced a 1-wire policy from the get-go (municipalities run single-mode fiber for the last mile and let ISPs compete at an aggregation point) we'd be world leaders instead of sad also-rans.

All of that is ignoring the caps that are starting to show up that will absolutely stifle innovation for the public internet. Or ISPs intercepting DNS traffic. Or insert any number of privacy violations. Claiming companies like Facebook and Google dominate because of the "open internet" of the US is laughably ridiculous. They exist because of our universities and GDP (which is more a result of WWII than any government deregulation). And given the current administrations insistence on locking down borders, I'd be more surprised if the US held its lead than Europe coming up with sufficient replacements.

OVH and Hetzner might not be AWS and Azure but they absolutely have the building blocks to compete if the market wants more players.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#38

Post by [deleted] »

victor106 wrote: post #17
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.

[deleted]

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#39

Post by throwawayiionqz »

RestlessMind wrote: post #24
Barrin92 wrote: post #8

I feel like every Stratechery piece on Europe is just plain bashing because Ben Thompson is allergic to regulation. Somehow extrapolating from one Indian company, Jio, to some sort of global vision of an internet while completely disregarding the European continent (which in pure market value obviously still is large) just seems like bad faith. Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm…

> We need an internet that works for its citizens and members, and on that front I have still more trust in the old continent I broadly agree with the spirit of this line. But I fail to see how Europe is achieving that. Can you share a few specific (and meaningful) examples of how European approach has created an outcome which works better for its citizens and members? So far from what I have seen, European companies…

Broadband and mobile prices are far more reasonable in Europe than in the US. Unlimited data+calls for Also the EU banned roaming fees and GDPR prevents the data reselling and privacy violations that carriers and ISP in other countries could introduce at some point.

On the other hand the US is unable to keep broadband companies from arbitrary price increases or per-building monopoly. Health care prices are also out-of-hand, it seems the US is happy to let their citizens getting ripped off as long as someone is making a big profit.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#40

Post by hash872 »

I'd be interested to hear peoples' experiences with complying with GPDR & expense. Ben is kind of a libertarian, and he takes it as an article of the libertarian faith that regulation simply entrenches incumbents/big companies by making it too expensive for new or smaller companies to break into a market. (He has made this point many, many times on Stratechery). Already in the private Stratechery forums, there's one person who said that he lead GPDR compliance for a startup and it wasn't expensive at all. What are other peoples' experiences with GPDR & cost?
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