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India, Jio, and the Four Internets

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Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#221

Post by KorematsuFred »

castevictim wrote: post #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…

I see that claim being thrown around a lot but it does not have much merit IMO.

India is very corrupt but then all companies know that already. There is nothing special that Reliance can offer that Vodafone or Airtel wont. In fact during the Congress government India saw the largest scam ever perpetuated by non-Reliance players.

Reliance is also not a winner always. Reliance industries has burned its hands on retail, 2G services, agriculture, social media and many other business.

People assign too much competence of current BJP government. Had they been half as competent as their opponents claim we would have seen a far different India.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#222

Post by KaiserPro »

catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #44

I enjoy Ben's articles, but this one has way too many opinions, and I'm not convinced his stance of Europe is fair. For the Privacy Shield matter - "The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) basically ruled that US law is too weak to protect EU citizens' data to the extent EU law demands." We know this - Mr. Zuckerberg asked for more regulation if anything. Regulation from Europe is protection for the consume…

The author confuses ISPs and business

The state of ISPs in the US is dire. There is almost no free market.

The EU has a much better market for ISPs. but thats nothing really to do with GDPR, its more to do with competition rules in the late 90s early 2000s. The roll out of 4g is a prime example. In the EU, countries rolled out actual 4g. In the US they were renaming LTE as 4g, instead of rolling out actual 4G.

As for business, yes EU companies appear to need to go to the states to get funding, thats primarily because the bar for funding is much lower in the states than it is in the EU.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#223

Post by saagarjha »

known wrote: post #219
castevictim wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that, judicial system which is statistically proven to be Brahminical[0]. But in jail two-third of prisoners are Dalits, tribals and from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 19% are Muslims[1]. [0] https://www.huffingtonpost.in/suraj-yengde/theres-a-caste-bi... [1] https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/majo...

And this is why in 1932 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award Ambedkar demanded a Separate Country (not Reservations) where Brahmin/Bania/Kshatriya can live on a Visa;

I think that is probably the most poorly written Wikipedia article I have read in a while.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#224

Post by sseth »

castevictim wrote: post #210
unmole wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wit…

During congress rule, CBI was referred to as a "caged parrot". The CBI did not act unless forced by the Supreme Court.

The CAG is a very different body - it is much more independent of government, and did raise issues around 2G spectrum allocation and many other areas during Congress time. I mean, the UPA had a minister running an entire TV station out of BSNL lines running to his home, so really it was pretty blatant and hard not to catch.

We should not confuse this type of corruption with doing favors to business which does not show up in government books, and is not easy for CAG to catch.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#225

Post by apexalpha »

xavi wrote: post #125
tsss wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bigg…

I disagree on the GDPR one. It's the only piece of legislation that protects my data online.

Prior to GDPR any data that you create wasn't yours and was freely sold, traded and aggregated. Even if you asked Google, Facebook or whoever for YOUR data to be sent back to you; they wouldn't be obligated to.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#226

Post by est »

> China is the only country to rival the U.S. for the sheer size and breadth of its Internet companies, thanks to the combination of a massive market and the lack of competition

Author assumes that Amazon, eBay, Newegg and Paypal was banned or blocked in China. It's not. Alibaba & jd.com won the market by competition.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#227

Post by aluksi »

castevictim wrote: post #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…

While there is some resemblance of truth in your argument but to compare India's democratically elected government to CCP authoritarianism is totally absurd. There is always lobbying and influence peddling in any government in any part of the world but to pronounce something diabolical with rather tenuous anecdotal evidence is just political posturing.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#228

Post by naruvimama »

Net neutrality was an idea, when networks consisted of universities, big corporations and government institutions.

Today the capex is entirely borne by ISP, Telcos, companies like Reliance. Free basics if it came into fruition would not have violated net neutrality, between the user and FB servers there would have been only one ISP in all probability.

The Indian narrative on HN is dominated by 1%'ers who hardly represent or know the ground reality for the 1.3 billion people.

For people so concerned about democracy, free press, evil INCs, free speech, duties on electronics..... it doesn't take a lot of effort to do some cursory research

Free press - checkout Indian news channels on Youtube, the fact that they can get away with this nonsense, yet claim the press doesn't have freedom. In Europe the govt holds the purse strings via the compulsory radio, TV & media license.

Duty on electronics - India is way cheaper than Europe for Laptops and Mobiles

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#229

Post by castevictim »

aluksi wrote: post #227
castevictim wrote: post #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…

While there is some resemblance of truth in your argument but to compare India's democratically elected government to CCP authoritarianism is totally absurd. There is always lobbying and influence peddling in any government in any part of the world but to pronounce something diabolical with rather tenuous anecdotal evidence is just political posturing.

>as it slips into total authoritarianism(like CCP).

https://scroll.in/latest/950716/india-slips-10-spots-to-51st...

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#230

Post by blueblisters »

castevictim wrote: post #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…

Ben later cited two articles written by people who are arguably closer in geographical proximity to Jio:

- https://hind.substack.com/p/reliance-origins/

- https://hind.substack.com/p/from-oil-to-jio

The articles say that the Ambani family was very close to the Gandhis too. It's very hard to find a complete picture of how Reliance works - I guess they keep a very tight inner circle. Most accusations of impropriety are very vague. I don't think anyone disagrees that Reliance has tremendous political influence, but it's hard to argue that influence is greater than other Indian oligarchs (Mittals, Tatas, Birlas etc.). It's especially hard to curry favor at the expense of the other.

I think the biggest reason for Reliance's relative success in cornering the telecom market is that their oil exports cashflow allows them to borrow money at much lower rates than their competitors, without worrying about hedging costs. The recent spate of investments have almost certainly been accelerated due to the drop in oil prices which has hurt their long-term debt settlement prospects tremendously. The investments gave a much needed sigh of relief for the Reliance group of companies and their bondholders.

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