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

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#241

Post by cocoland2 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 10:25 AM UTC

castevictim wrote: post #237

blueblisters wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>but it's hard to argue that influence is greater than other Indian oligarchs (Mittals, Tatas, Birlas etc.) That's naive at best. It's no secret that Billionaires have their way anywhere in the world, especially in India where inequality is enforced, armored with the caste system. So, an Entrepreneur belonging to high caste, heading a company (Infosys, TCS etc.) has far less hurdles than a lower caste individual whos…

There is a rush to the Indian telco space , not just JIO there is talk of Airtel getting infusion from Amazon

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/teleco...

P.S. The house always wins , does not matter who is at the centre. The little one Ambani was super close to the Congress (Ambani - Amar singh - SP - Congress) to be clear. He lost a truck load of money.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#242

Post by coder_seeker » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:00 AM UTC

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…

I totally agree with your reasoning. From purely consumers' point of view, Reliance Jio has been godsend for majority of Indians. One can argue that Pre-jio mobile internet in India was neither of high quality, nor as widely available and most importantly it was definitely NOT affordable. I had in my home in my small town in a backward state in 2015 - BSNL broadband which gave 512 Kbps unlimited usage broadband (or 2 Mbps limited broadband) or airtel 3g which had 2-4 mbps at Rs. 250 per GB. Much before Jio's official launch in September of 2016, I got it's 4g connection in May 1st week of that year. At that time, the condition was to buy one of their crappy 4g mobile phones (around Rs. 5500) sold by Reliance Retail to get their sim as part of beta program whose usage was truly free. The first thing after getting Jio sim I did was speedtest by Ookla - 40 Mbps! - I could'nt believe my eyes. Prior to that I was struggling to get even 4 mbps of decent speed. This beta program had no constraints - No daily limit whatsoever @ 40Mbps. During same month I was travelling by road to the state capital. In one of the remote villages, a thought came to do ookla speedtest. 25Mbps! It indeed was a beginning of a digital revolution. Not by disingenous charity (as Facebook tried to do through Free Basics) but purely by superior technology (all IP 4G network) backed by a hell lot of investment (I think 35 billion USD). When September 2016 came, and Jio was launched officially in 18000 towns and cities simulatenously. The demand was so high, that reliance jio's shops in most cities had long lines of potential customers (which previously I had only heard happens in Apple stores during launch of new products). One of the most innovative business tactics/models that Jio introducted was the per day GB plans. So technically you are getting 168 GB (2 gb per day for 84 days at Rs. 599 - today's price) but no one is gonna use uniformly throughout the month. So much of the GB's remain unused so the networks are not that congested if GBs of data usage was offered without any daily limits.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#243

Post by fellellor » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

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?

The lack of competition is not enforced. The advent of 4G and the heavy investment by telcos in earlier generations of telephony has left them unable to compete financially with Jio. The nature of 4G technology means that the other telcos’ business models and borrowing structures are now simply unviable, unserviceable.

Jio 4G quality not being the best in the world is not inconceivable but it’s not part of some crackpot conspiracy involving some Chinese style oligopoly.

For a more competitive telecom market, the GoI has to do large scale debt restructuring and let go of a lot of revenue that they expect from the other competing players.

But this will also not be understood or forgiven by many of the leftists, who are a bunch of malicious hypocrites and keep weaving the story of “evil Reliance”.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#244

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:14 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#245

Post by coder_seeker » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:15 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

What about the rest of the dozen investor's including private equity and sovereign funds that have invested in Jio. What political favors could they possibly gain? I think these investor's are mostly looking at multiple rates of return when Jio will IPO either in India or overseas (probably US). It is just a super attractive investment opportunity that is similar to any Silicon Valley High Growth startup.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#246

Post by coder_seeker » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

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…

Pre-Jio in 2015 and before, I could never understand what was going on in the minds of the top management of telecom companies in India. Why couldn't they think from the point of view of a consumer? I used to wonder hadn't they heard of a Win-Win strategy where both consumers as well as business are happy. At Rs. 250 per GB per month (if you recharged only once every month) how was an average Indian consumer to watch video or play games on the internet. 1 GB quota would be used up in only one or two hour of 1080p youtube watching. It was like if someone sold you a television with cable connection and told that you can watch only for two hours a month. How demeaning and idiotic would that be? How come the top telecom players prior to jio never realized the pent-up demand for video consumption on the internet? It is still a wonder to me. It is this behaviour of the incumbents in 2015 and before that prepared the telecom field for true disruption by Reliance Jio.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#247

Post by gigatexal » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:50 AM UTC

sseth wrote: post #224

castevictim wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 blatan…

To be fair I can’t think of a congress party member that was wanted for crimes against humanity on an international scale until he became PM and all was forgiven. [1]

[1](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30826044)

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#248

Post by entha_saava » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

ayush--s wrote: post #194

entha_saava wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other firms were worse in vision, thus Jio had an edge. When I was using internet on a J2ME phone and Opera Mini, it cost INR 4 for 20MB airtime (2G!), which lasted 1 day. A GB of data cost somewhere around INR 250, and lasted a month. [1] After Jio, these days I get around 30GB of 4G data for INR 150. That's the kind of improvement that changed people's lives. Yeah the fake news is No. 1 issue in India, WhatsApp…

Opera mini used a proxy to compress & downsize content (including images) on the fly

Yeah I know. I had even detected using about:config to render Kannada text on the phone which didn't support it - it cost more bandwidth but 20MB was too much for a day at that time.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#249

Post by castevictim » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

cocoland2 wrote: post #240

rusticpenn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atleast there was no situation where BSNL was not granted 5G rights, while Jio is granted with this. IT feels like Reliance is govt funded while BSNL is private.

I had my rant about BSNL down below. BSNL by a far distance has to be the worst in terms of Customer service , which is sad because i know of brilliant engineers who joined as Junior Engineers in BSNL clearing PSC. Unless there is accountability , there is no chance BSNL will survive. Note that this is really bad , especially for rural areas where BSNL had the strongest connectivity

I have spoken with several top BSNL authorities. Systematic hurdles are being thrown at them from performing even routine tasks necessary to maintain telecom infrastructure.

e.g. Roads cannot be dug up by BSNL for repairing their telephone lines, where as Reliance can. If they indeed proceed to dig up the road, they are threatened with a police case. In several cities, only Reliance have permission to dig the roads for new telephone/broadband lines.

In HAL, future Aircraft/Helicopter productions were halted after the Rafael deal was signed up with Jr. Ambani's Reliance. But when the whistleblower letter from PMO hit the roof, supreme court was involved, some HAL old projects were given permission to continue to not raise suspicion. But still, many in HAL beleive it's done for and only companies in nexus with BJP with no prior experience will manufacture military Aircraft in the future(This was before the China fiasco).

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#250

Post by castevictim » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #247

sseth wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 blatan…

To be fair I can’t think of a congress party member that was wanted for crimes against humanity on an international scale until he became PM and all was forgiven. [1] [1]( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30826044 )

It is indeed extraordinarily sad that we have accustomed to have 'A mass murder accused' as prime minister and it is not even part of discussions against the party which hosts him.