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India, Jio, and the Four Internets

stratechery.com

201–210 of 279 posts

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#201
> On the other hand, locking in a monopolistic player, particularly in the context of a government that has shown a desire for more control over the flow of information is a real downside.

This may warrant more than a single sentence. The government has in the past gone as far as turning the internet off in areas it doesn't want in the public eye. Censorship and banning of outlets is fairly common, and rarely as high profile as the recent tiktok ban.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#202
I think the lack of geographical proximity to Jio, didn't give Mr. Ben the complete picture of the forces at play.

The story of Jio (Reliance) cannot be told without the political-corruption-nexus in India, by investing in Jio - Facebook, Google, Qualcomm etc. not only acquire stake in 'The Enterprise' of India but also guaranteed of political favors apart from access to data from millions of Indians through a single unregulated channel.

Let me give you an example of the political reach companies like Adani, Reliance etc. which are in nexus with current ruling party - BJP have in India. I have personally heard from Ex. High Court judges that when they were presiding over cases involving Adani, Reliance they were approached by officials from those companies and were asked "Would you like to be a Governor after your retirement?".

As there is practically no real opposition party left in India, BJP will rule India for for decades to come as it slips into total authoritarianism(like CCP).

So being on good terms with Jio/Reliance aka BJP, guarantee these companies unfettered access to Indians and especially their data. I'm sure BJP already has the necessary infrastructure in place for analyzing data from Jio customers, now with Facebook, WhatsApp, Google you can see where this is going.

As any non-alignment with Jio/Reliance/BJP means 'the end' as we are seeing with even Govt. institutions like BSNL(Telecom), HAL (Aircraft Manufacturer) etc. Any business in India or from abroad now should appease Jio if they have to survive.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#203

Who believes in Jio, if reliance owner was a good businessman, he's have dominated in many other countries. The only reason he survives in India is because government is in his hands. He has used this many times to harm competition.

Jio is < 5 years old. Plus telecos typically kill one market first. Give it time.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#204
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?

Jio also tried to sue Ookla for publishing results showing Airtel to be the fastest 4G network in India. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/court-dis...

While Jio truly made cellular Internet available to 100's of millions of Indians, most post-paid (the profitable segment) customers are still with Airtel and to a lesser extent Vodafone (this one is a mystery). And Jio is again complaining to regulatory authorities that offering better plans to post-paid customers will harm all other customers (can't make this stuff up!). https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/huf1ec...

'The Ken' article, referenced in this Reddit thread, which is unfortunately behind the paywall, is very deep.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the speed is highly affected by the population density. I have seen speeds varying from ~40mbps to <1mbps. The less the density the higher the speed.

Which is funny as it's much cheaper to provide higher speeds in high density areas.

How so? Wont more connections to a tower saturate the bandwidth?

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#206

I think the lack of geographical proximity to Jio, didn't give Mr. Ben the complete picture of the forces at play. The story of Jio (Reliance) cannot be told without the political-corruption-nexus in India, by investing in Jio - Facebook, Google, Qualcomm etc. not only acquire stake in 'The Enterprise' of India but also guaranteed of political favors apart from access to data from millions of Indians through a single…

For decades? I think that's a gloomy thought. But these companies do have lobbies in all political parties. So whose in power won't make much of a difference.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the speed is highly affected by the population density. I have seen speeds varying from ~40mbps to <1mbps. The less the density the higher the speed.

Which is funny as it's much cheaper to provide higher speeds in high density areas.

Can you explain the science behind this ?

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#208

I think the lack of geographical proximity to Jio, didn't give Mr. Ben the complete picture of the forces at play. The story of Jio (Reliance) cannot be told without the political-corruption-nexus in India, by investing in Jio - Facebook, Google, Qualcomm etc. not only acquire stake in 'The Enterprise' of India but also guaranteed of political favors apart from access to data from millions of Indians through a single…

> nexus with current ruling party - BJP

It's not like things were too different before. Mukesh Ambani supposedly referred to the INC as Apni Dukaan. Both the Congress and BJP are more than happy to appease Motabhai.

Source: https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/mukesh-said-haan...

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#209

I think the lack of geographical proximity to Jio, didn't give Mr. Ben the complete picture of the forces at play. The story of Jio (Reliance) cannot be told without the political-corruption-nexus in India, by investing in Jio - Facebook, Google, Qualcomm etc. not only acquire stake in 'The Enterprise' of India but also guaranteed of political favors apart from access to data from millions of Indians through a single…

The auction irregularity conducted by the alleged Shell company which was bought by JIO and highlighted by CAG was done in 2010. This was the era of UPA2. Stop bashing BJP with over exaggerations. It is pretty well understood that Ambani is close to all political parties in India.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#210
post #208

I think the lack of geographical proximity to Jio, didn't give Mr. Ben the complete picture of the forces at play. The story of Jio (Reliance) cannot be told without the political-corruption-nexus in India, by investing in Jio - Facebook, Google, Qualcomm etc. not only acquire stake in 'The Enterprise' of India but also guaranteed of political favors apart from access to data from millions of Indians through a single…

> nexus with current ruling party - BJP It's not like things were too different before. Mukesh Ambani supposedly referred to the INC as Apni Dukaan . Both the Congress and BJP are more than happy to appease Motabhai. Source: https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/mukesh-said-haan...

Yes, but the systematic dismantling of the independent agencies did not happen during congress period even though there were always bootlickers around in every govt.

Remember Auditor General of India, CBI(FBI equivalent) discovered and booked Congress-alliance party members for scam while they were ruling? Now, CBI has become a laughing stock is being used as lap dogs for ruling party to get parties into alliance with them.

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