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India, Jio, and the Four Internets

stratechery.com

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Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#121

Post by jiofih »

pradn wrote: post #28
yalogin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much of Jio's dominance is just dumping? It seems unfair to cross-subsidize an industry like this. It's good for users in the short term, but if competition dwindles, it'll be bad for Indians long-term.

They built a vastly cheaper, more efficient network. That’s not dumping, just healthy competition.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#122

Post by blocked_again »

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.

> The monopoly of Jio is extremely bad for India.

Jio made Internet affordable to 100s of millions of Indians. It resulted in huge drop in data price. The results so far have been pretty good to the Indian society in general. Let's see what happens in future. Also Jio only accounts for 50% of Internet users.

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

Okay. So? American tech companies have millions of users. It's almost impossible that one day Jio/Indian gov wakes up and decides to ban these websites. The public is not dumb. Banning Chinese Internet is not the same as banning the Internet. Unless the US decides one day to start claiming land in India or ban non US internet companies in USA. The likelihood of that happening is very very low.

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

Or they want to invest in a promising tech company and don't want to be left out?

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#123

Post by curiousllama »

I'm surprised Ben didn't emphasize aggregation theory here - it might be the biggest example yet!

The American internet is a disintermediated morass or tech product/service providers each building on each other to make the internet work. But each foundational industry that makes it up - chips, infrastructure, consumer products, applications - has relatively few players. By selling bits and pieces of itself, Jio is not only getting people to invest in it's vision, but getting a share of the oligoplies at each layer. Google's staying power can become Jio's, and by extension, the government's.

India's telecom market is crazy competitive, and another ISP will quickly develop if the government lets it. The support of American tech companies will be Jio's real moat in the future.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#124

Post by spians »

> This has led to a regular number of collisions between foreign tech companies and India regulators, whether it be Facebook’s attempts to introduce Free Basics or WhatsApp payments, increasing restrictions on Amazon and Flipkart’s e-commerce operations, or most recently, the outright banning of TikTok on national security concerns.

It should be cleared that all of these are isolated events and have nothing in common as for the reason.

- Facebook's Free Basics was a direct threat to net neutrality.

- WhatsApp payments are working fine now. There were many issues between their beta launch and the actual launch after almost two years but most of them were related WhatsApp's inability to comply with local data protection and storage law. (UPI related data must be stored in India IIRC).

- Restrictions on Amazon and Flipkart has more to do with their anti competitive practices (promoting the seller in which they are the main stakeholders) and the pressure from retailer unions.

- Banning of TikTok (along with all the other Chinese apps) is largely because of the recent tensions between India and China due to clashes at Ladakh border.

Also this piece talks about privacy when discussing US and Europe model but doesn't mention it for China and India. We all know about data sharing of Chinese apps with CCP. But nobody is talking about the personal data protection when using Jio apps. I did some basic analysis and found the apps built by Jio platforms to have worse privacy policy then their US counter parts (and even their Chinese counter parts in some cases).

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#125

Post by xavi »

tsss wrote: post #105
darawk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. But he actually makes a very specific point: > This Internet, though, f…

And why is that bad? I don't care if the software I'm using is coming from the US and if there are going to be globally dominant European internet companies. The only thing that counts to me is getting a good product, which privacy regulations are critical for, and getting taxes, which also requires more regulation not less.

I think European regulations like GDPR or cookie laws have made the Internet worse, not better. They're not effective and make things more complicated for everyone.

I think that people in government should design rules to provide equal opportunities to everyone. I think that will benefit you even if you see yourself only as a consumer. I agree with what the article says, the European regulations only benefit the bigger companies, which have the resources to handle the red tape.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#126

Post by yalogin »

pradn wrote: post #28
yalogin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much of Jio's dominance is just dumping? It seems unfair to cross-subsidize an industry like this. It's good for users in the short term, but if competition dwindles, it'll be bad for Indians long-term.

Jio actually broke the dominance of Airtel in India. Its a perfectly executed strategy IMO and capitalism at work. The company bled money to undercut Airtel and other companies to gain market share and they did it really well. Now they are the market leaders. I wish something like that happened in the US. It often feels like companies collude with pricing here.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#127

Post by ra7 »

ktrl wrote: post #67
ra7 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geopolitics isn't determined by comments on Internet forums. It's determined by mutual interest between governments and how their administrative officials think. YouTube and Reddit comments don't mean anything given that a vast majority don't understand nuances of geopolitics.

>Geopolitics isn't determined by comments on Internet forums Politics is increasingly being influenced by Internet movements and culture. Millions of Indians being repeatedly exposed to what reddit and YouTube has to say about them will change their opinion about the West for the worse. The Indians who browse reddit and YouTube are more likely to be young and politically savvy. I'm not calling for censorship. One pos…

> Politics is increasingly being influenced by Internet movements and culture.

They are not. Internet users affect public opinion, but only to an extent that it may influence domestic policy. International affairs are run levels above and they rarely take cues from the Internet because, as I said before, the general public lack the nuance in discussing geopolitics. Case in point, America's relationship with the Saudis. People in the US have been complaining "Saudi Arabia bad" for a long time, yet the alliance is as strong as ever because public opinion simply does not matter in geopolitics.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#128

Post by murukesh_s »

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?

I am getting 44 Mbps as i type (checked in fast.com). I am in Bangalore. It not very fast in other places i have been, but better than other networks (varies by location and almost always better than state-owned BSNL). Jio revolutionised the industry and was a boon for traveling as well. I barely ask for hotel wifi as almost always Jio connected fine even if between 4-10Mbps - it was good enough for checking emails, office work and casual surfing the internet.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#129

Post by triceratops »

azinman2 wrote: post #59
mola wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said unicorns are good? Money =\= value. It's just a proxy, which doesn't always work. You know how you can prevent regulation? Don't be excessive and greedy.

But where are the examples of the valued products in large use? Let's see.. Spotify ok, Mojang hmmmhmmm.... Rovio? Outside of Spotify, what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?

> what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?

Booking.com? Adyen? (they're worth more than Stripe)

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#130

Post by product50 »

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…

Where is the Europe's alternate to US's or Chinese companies? Please give examples to support your cases vs. just calling out your biases. It is so unfortunate that Europe has just allowed itself to be so dominated by US' and Chinese (in the case of Huawei) companies.
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