I'm from India. I can confirm this. It's because unlimited LTE data costs about rs700 per month or 10 dollars. It can be spotty at times - but it works. Mobile is by far the most used form factor. Search for "Jio" on your app store and you'll see a variety of apps like JioTV, JioCinema, JioNews etc.. That means free news, live tv and movies all for the price of a cell phone subscription. Jio is the name of the service provider. No surprise India has the highest data use - there's almost no need to buy a TV anymore to watch content. You could also imagine why it might be hard for Netflix, Spotify and Prime movies to compete in India - because those services are bundled out of the box (no secret pay walls and great quality) for the price of your cell service. The mobile revolution in India wasn't about the phone - it was about access to fast mobile data. India has the lead on this one. We're paying too much in America.
> You could also imagine why it might be hard for Netflix, Spotify and Prime movies to compete in India
Till a certain extent. Netflix, Prime Videos, Hotstar etc have much more variety and higher quality and some are VERY AFFORDABLE. Prime videos and Hotstar (HBO, Game of thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley like shows) can be had for $14 USD per year EACH. So upwardly mobile Indians can subscribe to multiple OTT streaming services (I do Netflix, Hostart, Primve Video + Apple Music). For the price of one Spotify sub in US, you can subscribe to 5-7 music streaming services in India.
For the rest, Indian creators on YouTube have pretty much surpassed every big name streaming company. TVF, Timeliners etc have created content which resonates with 18-35 year olds on an emotional level. Netflix et al. will never have that emotional connect so easily.
Thats mostly because of population density and sunk labor costs for building the infrastructure. Many parts of US are so sparsely populated that the densely populated regions have to subsidize some of the costs of buildding the infrastrcuture in those regions.
Canada is the worst when it comes to mobile services because they don't have cities like New York to subsidize the sparse regions. I mean the most dense metro area - Greater Toronto area has a population nf 4 million or so.
Any densely populated nation has very affordable mobile services. In my experience - UK, France, Singapore and SE Asia all have affordable mobile services.
Of course, no one can match Jio when it comes to price:feature parity. They have done what no other telecom provider in the world could do. It was and still remains one of the biggest bets in the telecom world and it wouldn't have been possible in any other country, except may be China.
Actually, most plans are way cheaper than that. Most people I know are on a $9 or $10 prepaid plan for three months of unlimited calls, messages and 2GB/day. It kinda covers most typical video usage.
”there's almost no need to buy a TV anymore to watch content.”
You’re talking about access. People don’t buy a TV to get access to content, they buy one to watch the content, whether that’s via cable, OTA, streaming services, pirating, etc. Are you saying that people in India are just fine with consuming all of their TV and movies on a tiny phone screen?
I know some people who don’t have a TV, but they would rather just not watch TV/movies at all than stream it to their phone (other than maybe during a long commute or while on the plane).
In the US, my phone is on Wifi pretty much most of time during the day. When I am at work, my phone is on Wifi. When I get home, it is on Wifi as well. When I go to Starbucks, my phone connects to Wifi automatically. India has very limited wifi access. The overall data usage is still a lot higher in the US than in India.
Ah this must explain why india has the worst network congestion and reliability out of all countries on apps I’ve worked on (and they are fairly worldwide apps)
It also depends in the regular income. YouTube music costs $10 per month, I would have never paid that when I was in India, where I could just skip the ad & the cost of data for video YouTube is not much. About 3GBs daily, for Rs 284 for two months, or about $4 total, 4G where available, 3G other places. Before Jio launch, the data cost were same without the word DAily, so about $4 for 3 GB TOTAL in a month.
Damn. We’re paying too much in South Africa! It’s way more expensive here. But I guess the carriers charge what they can get away with. Data is also a lot cheaper in Kenya for the average person. Here in SA its still out of reach for many people.
Jio revolution is the main reason for this, after Jio almost every other vendor is giving you 30Gb(1Gb per day) for $5-6 , no wonder, there is a %30-40 utilization of data.
Majority of this utilization would be on Streaming, Torrent downloads etc etc, Also to note that , many of the calls made in India are VOLTE calls..
Jio is fascinating. I once held a talk at an event where their Interim CISO Karsten Nohl was also speaking.
The way Jio was built and what challenges they faced trying to build a gigantic mobile operator from scratch and building it secure from day one are a story i'd like to read a book about, but I'm already glad he held a talk about it.
The most interesting part was their realization that there was nearly no "new & secure" hardware available they could buy off the shelf, most came with old unpatched versions of software, many had components that simply had no update functionality at all, some had but required manual onsite intervention for updates, just what you need when you want to connect one of the largest countries on this planet. This was not third-rate stuff from China, he was talking Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei... the name brands involved in this space.
Fascinating and astounding what went on at this time at Jio and i'm grateful that sometimes people that deeply care about these issues get into these positions and get to fight these demons.
I totally agree with you. Even though Jio has blocked many torrent website, still people find holes to download the content. Normally people subscribe for the 1 or 1.5 GB/day plan, which was earlier very much affordable compared to other operators. Not others too have reduced their prices to stay in competition.
One advantage is that Jio was totally new to the market so they started with 4G networks directly. The connectivity, voice clarity and bandwidth was very good due to only-4G network. Other operators were are still working on 2G, 3G and 4G.
I had earlier worked for Jio for 5 years and I feel proud today that I contributed for the country - in allowing the easy access of data to public. I remember, before 6 years I used to get 1 GB data for Rs. 250. Today for the same amount I can nearly get 50 GB data.
My wife also worked for Jio and today is her last day. I feel very sad now.
Jio censors the web of its own volition including censoring torrents and porn websites [0]. And it is no secret that it does deep packet inspection and kind of has an extensive footprint via its numerous apps that I'd presume gather how much ever data that they can abt its customers.
[0] This has interestingly resulted in folks using Helo, Telegram et al to share pirated content and porn.
It’s even cheaper than that. 1GB 4G data per day, with unlimited calls (local and long distance) and 100 SMS per day, can be had on prepaid plans that cost about $2 (₹140) per month on longer duration plans (like 84 days). With additional discounts, this can go down even further.
These plans are provided by the other major service providers.
Postpaid plans (contract plans) in India are ripoffs, comparatively.
The biggest telcos in India havent even started content plays. Netflix just entered India.
And we still have HALF A BILLION people not on the internet.
This is in an environment with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy (that cannot be reversed by the govt), a govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay and perhaps the world's largest pool of software developers.
There are multiple large/successful venture funded startups in India started and run by non-citizen expatriates (incl women). English is pretty much the language of business and India-US/India-EU have excellent non-double taxation laws.
> govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay
UPI or Unified Payments Interface. I cannot stress how innovative this payment mode is.
* No risk of fraud (can't approve a transaction without a PIN on your mobile) - fraud as in card cloning, malware infected websites running off with card details. Does not preclude social engineering where users fall into clever tricks.
* no privacy issues yet (money is directly debited from account without a mastercard/visa involved)
* anyone can make a UPI app (all banks have their own, Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe etc)
* no cards to duplicate
* you can manage multiple VPAs on one account, so I can create different identities for different purposes all debiting money from one account.
Exceptions - UPI still doesn't support recurring payments or subscriptions and some other cases.
But as a regular consumer, I find plastic outdated. I've never used WeChat/AliPay so can't comment on that but the only time I have to use a credit card is when I have to pay international companies (DO, GSuite etc) in USD/EUR.
Even seen the balance sheets of telcos in India. They are drowning in it and very soon it would become unserviceable. In NPA (non performing assets) India is among top 5 in the world and recently beat Italy on this dubious distinction. When all government owned banks write off this money, it is taxpayers who will be footing the bill.
> Healthcare is dirt cheap and very good.
That's news to me because afaik it is damn expensive for the income level in India.
> This is in an environment with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy (that cannot be reversed by the govt)
There is no data privacy law in India as yet. The one drafted last year has many issues. Saying that the government cannot reverse it is naive. The government can make laws that side with corporates and itself, without providing adequate protections for citizens.
The Aadhaar linkage and re-enablement for use by private companies in contravention to the Supreme Court verdict is another sign that the government can, and will, do what it wants. The Supreme Court is unfortunately not proactive in issues that have the potential to affect all the people in the country.
>> constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy
Considering nearly everyone (who isn't an ARPU "deadbeat") is on WhatsApp I would think the ruling doesn't matter one way or another because you don't have much privacy left anyway.
Plus, if the govt wants the scoop on anyone's private life, they will just ask Facebook to hand it over or else.... (ban WhatsApp, ban Instagram, block approval for cryptocurrency projects, harden data storage rules and whatever else a government can do to threaten a corporation).
I thought I recall hearing someone say that cellphone plans and rates are much more reasonable there. That it's not uncommon for companies to actually compete to lower prices. Is that true?
I have a PS4, and before Jio, I purposely did not update my games (Witcher3 had a 20GB update). Even after getting a Jio connection, it was too time consuming. And then, I found out I have 3 10GB vouchers! And I usually get more, the more ads I consume.
3.5GB/day, 100 SMS/day, unlimited Local/STD calls @ $2/Month at a remote town in India.
At peak hours I see 1+ Mbps, 8+ Mbps during least(10pm - 8am) traffic hours.
I use DNSFilter along with DoT & DoH for Smartphone. Stubby for my Laptop's Ubuntu over USB hotspot.
Yes, JIO changed data market with its bullish 4G investment. Prior to that, subscribers could ride free on with zero/month for only incoming calls. Now every subscriber has to pay $2-4/annum for the same ride.
Americans are going to be livid when they learn how cheap data plans are in India. The reason this works is free market, unlike the US where the likes of Comcast have monopoly in the regions they operate.
Hasan Minhaj did a show this week on Netflix, you should watch it - he explains pretty well how horrible Comcast like companies are.
It's weird. I'm an American living in Russia. Here, we have many more choices for cell phone plans. And they're all cheap and innovative vs even the cheapest US plan. Competition really does work!
Probably true, but how does that jive with the perception that it was all triggered by below-cost discounts from the likes of Jio to grab market share at a huge loss, and that it's not sustainable?
Had no idea about India, but I am gearing up to move to the UK soon and was looking into phone plans.
Even Europe is way, way cheaper than America. Why is it so expensive here? Anyone know? Is it just that a few companies run the market and can charge what they want? Or are there less nefarious reasons?
>Americans are going to be livid when they learn how cheap data plans are in India. The reason this works is free market, unlike the US where the likes of Comcast have monopoly in the regions they operate.
What does Comcast have to do with the price of cellular data?
Jio has set the entire market on fire. I remember 3 Years back I was paying Rs. 1000/month @ 1Mbps unlimited to my local broadband service provider. Today the same service provider is offering me unlimited data @ 50Mbps without change in cost!
Edit: Also, the entire network is ipv6 enabled from the beginning. India went from white to green within months on ipv6 graph at
Can someone explain why in countries with established infrastructure, automation and cheaper capital cost (albeit higher labor cost) the internet cost is around 10-20x more than in India?
Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...
I think it is because there is much less usage of home internet in India. Thus what North America and Europe split between mobile and home internet is all on India's mobile.
This means that India is actually much lower in total bandwidth usage per month per person than North America and Europe overall.
I live in Arkansas, and my AT&T bill this month is $410. Granted, about $150 of that are payment plans for devices, but still. The base rate plan is $110, and there's a $20-30 per line fee for four separate lines.
I have an iPad Pro 11" LTE and an iPhone X, my wife has an S10+, and I handed down my 6th Gen iPad LTE to my 10-year-old. It's a lot more than "needed", and our aggregate data usage is 30+ GB/month, but still. The difference in cost is staggering.
This is so true. My mom watches all her Serials, news and funny vids in her mobile. Our TV is deserted now!
Jio forced everyone to bring down the prices. Now all those companies have begun posting quarterly losses and they don't have a humungous cash cow like jio. This is not gonna end well.
I wonder how population density effects price for cellular carriers. One reason wireless is expensive in the US, to my knowledge, is because much of the surface area is sparsely populated with customers requiring more wireless tower infrastructure to cover fewer people (then costs are spread across most the national or regional customer base).
In dense cities, I imagine towers can theoretically serve more people. Obviously you reach a saturation point where a tower can only serve so many people and has to be expanded but I suspect this lowers infrastructure costs. One would have to be able to handle larger "burst" demands in a densely populated area though.
On top of that, I'm not familiar with topography of India, but certain areas in the US are mountainous and as a result, require even more towers to provide coverage (for typically sparse populations). In dense cities where you have near line of sight, I imagine that increases range reducing infrastructure demands some (though this constraint may be moot based on typical tower saturation).
In India I would expect cheaper prices based on that line of reason, though I may be missing something critical (I'm no telecom expert).
and, this artificially low cost data is killing competition, which will impact a lot of their debt held by banks.
and to keep these banks alive, govt shall resort to some more "recapitalization".
effectively, Jio's low cost data is being funded by taxpayer money.
[] Movie piracy: continuing through telegram groups
[] WhatsApp - people share videos on whatsapp a lot these days..
[] YouTube - Here I don't think ppl are much into paying for Netflix / Amazon, but YouTube is used a lot.
[] Others: services like hotstar, voot ( movie / TV live streaming ), audio streaming services. Most of these are ad supported. And of course, seems quite a lot at adult content..
This is what I observed in surroundings. Indian people don't care much about ads and that also has been a monetization strategy for jio. I personally don't use any of their apps but many do. Also their cheap feature phones embed advertising.
In my limited experience, my Indian coworkers had 2 SIMs minimum. Some had 3 or 4 but one would likely be a promotional “free” one.
This was in Delhi and they said the providers could be very flakey. A back up was necessary. Some people also used their phone and it’s hotspot as the main source of internet.
Are having multiple SIMs common in India? Or was I just working with Software Engineers?
[+] [-] catchmeifyoucan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inapis|6 years ago|reply
Till a certain extent. Netflix, Prime Videos, Hotstar etc have much more variety and higher quality and some are VERY AFFORDABLE. Prime videos and Hotstar (HBO, Game of thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley like shows) can be had for $14 USD per year EACH. So upwardly mobile Indians can subscribe to multiple OTT streaming services (I do Netflix, Hostart, Primve Video + Apple Music). For the price of one Spotify sub in US, you can subscribe to 5-7 music streaming services in India.
For the rest, Indian creators on YouTube have pretty much surpassed every big name streaming company. TVF, Timeliners etc have created content which resonates with 18-35 year olds on an emotional level. Netflix et al. will never have that emotional connect so easily.
[+] [-] deepGem|6 years ago|reply
Thats mostly because of population density and sunk labor costs for building the infrastructure. Many parts of US are so sparsely populated that the densely populated regions have to subsidize some of the costs of buildding the infrastrcuture in those regions.
Canada is the worst when it comes to mobile services because they don't have cities like New York to subsidize the sparse regions. I mean the most dense metro area - Greater Toronto area has a population nf 4 million or so.
Any densely populated nation has very affordable mobile services. In my experience - UK, France, Singapore and SE Asia all have affordable mobile services.
Of course, no one can match Jio when it comes to price:feature parity. They have done what no other telecom provider in the world could do. It was and still remains one of the biggest bets in the telecom world and it wouldn't have been possible in any other country, except may be China.
[+] [-] jeswin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|6 years ago|reply
You’re talking about access. People don’t buy a TV to get access to content, they buy one to watch the content, whether that’s via cable, OTA, streaming services, pirating, etc. Are you saying that people in India are just fine with consuming all of their TV and movies on a tiny phone screen?
I know some people who don’t have a TV, but they would rather just not watch TV/movies at all than stream it to their phone (other than maybe during a long commute or while on the plane).
[+] [-] deepVoid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novok|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davchana|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul7986|6 years ago|reply
What is the cost for the service you mentioned in India in US dollars?
[+] [-] gingabriska|6 years ago|reply
Also, India would have better date quality if market was open to foreign players without requiring Indian stakes.
India has very high density in many areas where these kind of data rates are possible and we all would be on 1gbps connections
[+] [-] totaldude87|6 years ago|reply
Majority of this utilization would be on Streaming, Torrent downloads etc etc, Also to note that , many of the calls made in India are VOLTE calls..
[+] [-] Roritharr|6 years ago|reply
The way Jio was built and what challenges they faced trying to build a gigantic mobile operator from scratch and building it secure from day one are a story i'd like to read a book about, but I'm already glad he held a talk about it.
The most interesting part was their realization that there was nearly no "new & secure" hardware available they could buy off the shelf, most came with old unpatched versions of software, many had components that simply had no update functionality at all, some had but required manual onsite intervention for updates, just what you need when you want to connect one of the largest countries on this planet. This was not third-rate stuff from China, he was talking Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei... the name brands involved in this space.
Fascinating and astounding what went on at this time at Jio and i'm grateful that sometimes people that deeply care about these issues get into these positions and get to fight these demons.
[+] [-] purplex|6 years ago|reply
One advantage is that Jio was totally new to the market so they started with 4G networks directly. The connectivity, voice clarity and bandwidth was very good due to only-4G network. Other operators were are still working on 2G, 3G and 4G.
I had earlier worked for Jio for 5 years and I feel proud today that I contributed for the country - in allowing the easy access of data to public. I remember, before 6 years I used to get 1 GB data for Rs. 250. Today for the same amount I can nearly get 50 GB data.
My wife also worked for Jio and today is her last day. I feel very sad now.
[+] [-] ignoramous|6 years ago|reply
[0] This has interestingly resulted in folks using Helo, Telegram et al to share pirated content and porn.
[+] [-] wtmt|6 years ago|reply
These plans are provided by the other major service providers.
Postpaid plans (contract plans) in India are ripoffs, comparatively.
[+] [-] kareemm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alberto_ol|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandGorgon|6 years ago|reply
The biggest telcos in India havent even started content plays. Netflix just entered India.
And we still have HALF A BILLION people not on the internet. This is in an environment with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to privacy (that cannot be reversed by the govt), a govt run mobile payments infrastructure that is literally a free Stripe+Paypal+Venmo+Alipay and perhaps the world's largest pool of software developers.
There are multiple large/successful venture funded startups in India started and run by non-citizen expatriates (incl women). English is pretty much the language of business and India-US/India-EU have excellent non-double taxation laws.
Healthcare is dirt cheap and very good.
Its a brilliant time to do a startup here.
[+] [-] inapis|6 years ago|reply
UPI or Unified Payments Interface. I cannot stress how innovative this payment mode is.
* No risk of fraud (can't approve a transaction without a PIN on your mobile) - fraud as in card cloning, malware infected websites running off with card details. Does not preclude social engineering where users fall into clever tricks.
* no privacy issues yet (money is directly debited from account without a mastercard/visa involved)
* anyone can make a UPI app (all banks have their own, Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe etc)
* no cards to duplicate
* you can manage multiple VPAs on one account, so I can create different identities for different purposes all debiting money from one account.
Exceptions - UPI still doesn't support recurring payments or subscriptions and some other cases.
But as a regular consumer, I find plastic outdated. I've never used WeChat/AliPay so can't comment on that but the only time I have to use a credit card is when I have to pay international companies (DO, GSuite etc) in USD/EUR.
EDIT - expanded on kinds of fraud.
[+] [-] geodel|6 years ago|reply
> Healthcare is dirt cheap and very good.
That's news to me because afaik it is damn expensive for the income level in India.
[+] [-] wtmt|6 years ago|reply
There is no data privacy law in India as yet. The one drafted last year has many issues. Saying that the government cannot reverse it is naive. The government can make laws that side with corporates and itself, without providing adequate protections for citizens.
The Aadhaar linkage and re-enablement for use by private companies in contravention to the Supreme Court verdict is another sign that the government can, and will, do what it wants. The Supreme Court is unfortunately not proactive in issues that have the potential to affect all the people in the country.
[+] [-] justanobody|6 years ago|reply
Considering nearly everyone (who isn't an ARPU "deadbeat") is on WhatsApp I would think the ruling doesn't matter one way or another because you don't have much privacy left anyway.
Plus, if the govt wants the scoop on anyone's private life, they will just ask Facebook to hand it over or else.... (ban WhatsApp, ban Instagram, block approval for cryptocurrency projects, harden data storage rules and whatever else a government can do to threaten a corporation).
[+] [-] rohan1024|6 years ago|reply
Checkout https://www.justwatch.com/in to see the content providers in India. Last time I checked we had less streaming services than Germany!
[+] [-] jxramos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harias|6 years ago|reply
Data-plans on offer: https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans
And they manage to remain profitable (only-telco in India that reported profit this quarter) : https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/relian...
[+] [-] taneq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z3phyr|6 years ago|reply
EDIT: English sentence structure
[+] [-] Joakal|6 years ago|reply
https://www.aldimobile.com.au/plans/data-packs/
[+] [-] lota-putty|6 years ago|reply
At peak hours I see 1+ Mbps, 8+ Mbps during least(10pm - 8am) traffic hours.
I use DNSFilter along with DoT & DoH for Smartphone. Stubby for my Laptop's Ubuntu over USB hotspot.
Yes, JIO changed data market with its bullish 4G investment. Prior to that, subscribers could ride free on with zero/month for only incoming calls. Now every subscriber has to pay $2-4/annum for the same ride.
After this mandatory fee, I suspect #subscribers in overall fell. Edit: Indeed latest stats see a dip in Mar-2019. Last year it saw double digit growth in subscriptions. https://main.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/PR_No.40of2019....
[+] [-] justaguyhere|6 years ago|reply
Hasan Minhaj did a show this week on Netflix, you should watch it - he explains pretty well how horrible Comcast like companies are.
[+] [-] cpursley|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_industry_in_Russi...
[+] [-] novok|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belltaco|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firstplacelast|6 years ago|reply
Even Europe is way, way cheaper than America. Why is it so expensive here? Anyone know? Is it just that a few companies run the market and can charge what they want? Or are there less nefarious reasons?
[+] [-] treis|6 years ago|reply
What does Comcast have to do with the price of cellular data?
[+] [-] rohan1024|6 years ago|reply
Edit: Also, the entire network is ipv6 enabled from the beginning. India went from white to green within months on ipv6 graph at
https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|6 years ago|reply
Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...
[+] [-] bhouston|6 years ago|reply
This means that India is actually much lower in total bandwidth usage per month per person than North America and Europe overall.
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|6 years ago|reply
I live in Arkansas, and my AT&T bill this month is $410. Granted, about $150 of that are payment plans for devices, but still. The base rate plan is $110, and there's a $20-30 per line fee for four separate lines.
I have an iPad Pro 11" LTE and an iPhone X, my wife has an S10+, and I handed down my 6th Gen iPad LTE to my 10-year-old. It's a lot more than "needed", and our aggregate data usage is 30+ GB/month, but still. The difference in cost is staggering.
[+] [-] vijaybritto|6 years ago|reply
Jio forced everyone to bring down the prices. Now all those companies have begun posting quarterly losses and they don't have a humungous cash cow like jio. This is not gonna end well.
[+] [-] Frost1x|6 years ago|reply
In dense cities, I imagine towers can theoretically serve more people. Obviously you reach a saturation point where a tower can only serve so many people and has to be expanded but I suspect this lowers infrastructure costs. One would have to be able to handle larger "burst" demands in a densely populated area though.
On top of that, I'm not familiar with topography of India, but certain areas in the US are mountainous and as a result, require even more towers to provide coverage (for typically sparse populations). In dense cities where you have near line of sight, I imagine that increases range reducing infrastructure demands some (though this constraint may be moot based on typical tower saturation).
In India I would expect cheaper prices based on that line of reason, though I may be missing something critical (I'm no telecom expert).
[+] [-] cyberjunkie|6 years ago|reply
We were deprived for the longest, being offered a gigabyte for a month for $5 - $10, and now we have practically free mobile connectivity with data.
[+] [-] tsjq|6 years ago|reply
not to forget how Jio scammed their way into existence:
[1] https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/spectrum-grab/art...
[2] https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/the-great-telecom...
and, this artificially low cost data is killing competition, which will impact a lot of their debt held by banks. and to keep these banks alive, govt shall resort to some more "recapitalization".
effectively, Jio's low cost data is being funded by taxpayer money.
we all need to keep that in mind.
[+] [-] axyjo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tellme_throwa|6 years ago|reply
[] Movie piracy: continuing through telegram groups
[] WhatsApp - people share videos on whatsapp a lot these days..
[] YouTube - Here I don't think ppl are much into paying for Netflix / Amazon, but YouTube is used a lot.
[] Others: services like hotstar, voot ( movie / TV live streaming ), audio streaming services. Most of these are ad supported. And of course, seems quite a lot at adult content..
This is what I observed in surroundings. Indian people don't care much about ads and that also has been a monetization strategy for jio. I personally don't use any of their apps but many do. Also their cheap feature phones embed advertising.
[+] [-] denzil_correa|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|6 years ago|reply
This was in Delhi and they said the providers could be very flakey. A back up was necessary. Some people also used their phone and it’s hotspot as the main source of internet.
Are having multiple SIMs common in India? Or was I just working with Software Engineers?
[+] [-] ycombonator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
For anyone reading this from India: is there any negative sentiment about Jio or is everyone just really excited to have cheap reliable data access?