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 costly.) There were no much 4G smartphones. Airtel wifi devices were advertised very much.
In 2016 Nov, Jio did amazing job by giving 4G data free for almost 4 months(10GB per day was limit,i guess. Also, 2G speed afterwards). It then introduced cheapest 4G 1GB/day plan for ₹400/3 months( 5.37 USD for 3 months) .Few other cellular network companies gradually went bankrupt, but others too introduced cheap plans(comparable to jio plan). This way,they revolutionized Indian internet and i am thankful to them for providing Cheap and Good internet.
But,it certainly was a curse for other ISPs(only jio,airtel(which bought few rival companies like tata docomo), and idea/Vodafone(both which got merged), state owned BSNL are remaining.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?".
Corruption in judiciary is widely known and it predates Adani, Reliace etc. Nothing much can be done here as the Constitution exempts contempt of court from freedom of speech.
> 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).
Similar predictions were made for Congress but things turned out differently. BJP has even lost some key states recently. That doesn't look like CCP in anyway.
> 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.
Since gas prices are on high side and highly regulated by the government in India, I don't think Reliance ever faced pressures the way other refiners in the world did with low/high oil prices. If anything high pump prices are just another form of subsidy to Reliance as oil prices have stayed low in recent years.
What else can we expect when 50% Ministers in Modi Cabinet are Brahmin and 80% Judges in Courts are Brahmin; And Brahmin are just 3% in India; https://archive.is/ojjbF
Too much overconfidence in Reliance. This is the same firm well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom.
It has done a great job deploying the network. Unmatched probably anywhere in the world. But that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future.
That set of skills to rollout a network at huge scale quickly, existed in India because of cut throat competition in the Telco space over 15 years.
But the skills to handle the sociological, political and psychological fallout from Scale that Zuckerberg, Dorsey et al have to deal with 24*7 does not exist in India.
They will get the Amazon/payments/delivery/cloud stuff,the easy stuff, right cuz the talent, cash, ambition and drive exists.
But the other stuff, the stuff that actually requires vision, is waiting to blow in India. If you think polarization/inequality/fake news etc etc in US is bad, go and visit India. I was there in Jan and the whole place was burning.
This bet on 4G/cloud/platforms etc is not because of some great vision of the future. It's really about crashing crude prices resulting in a huge pivot from their bread and butter Oil/Refining Business(they own the largest refinery in the world).
It can all collapse or go nowhere as that start hitting issues no one has dealt with before.
Plus there is the small issue of huge existing players who are not exactly lining up to bend over to the Ambanis.
To sum up, the Indian Internet or whatever emerges there is in for a unpredictable wild ride over the next few years and the current rose tinted view of Reliance matches what Facebook had in its early year. Expect that to change.
> well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom.
There's two different Reliances. When the old Papa died, the two Ambani boys divided his empire into two. The older one kept the oil etc, and the younger one got telecommunications etc. There was some agreement of not competing for X years. The younger brother's telco failed miserably and had to be bailed out by the elder. After that the elder went ahead and start his own telco. That's why he's a little late in the game.
> If you think polarization/inequality/fake news etc etc in US is bad, go and visit India. I was there in Jan and the whole place was burning.
This kind of gloom and doom messaging about India has been happening since the 1950s. This is more an emotion than actual facts. The equivalent of this in US is doubting the capabilities of SpaceX because of BLM protests - totally different issues.
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 and Facebook spoiled this country. The elder generation naively believes what they read on whatsapp and that's terrible. The young generation is driven by emotions and identity politics not logic. But I think that's orthogonal to Jio the company.
[1] It is another thing that Opera Mini was freaking fast even on that network and didn't spend even 10MB per day for casual web page browsing. But if you want to get PDF or media content the internet was both slow and expensive.
Maybe we are underestimating the power of their relations with the present government, in terms of an ally that can be used to threaten or harm competitors both Indian and foreign.
Just like TikTok can be banned, other services can eventually be banned too, under the garb of nationalism or whatever and India can potentially go the full China way with Reliance as the Indian Baidu or Alibaba, or at least as a major rent seeker in the ecosystem.
With enough protectionism a local company need not try to be a quality alternative to FB or Google.
For example of some Indian Government protectionist whimsy that affected Amazon and Walmart owned Flipkart take a look at [1].
Which 'coincidentally' came the same week that Reliance had announced plans to launch an ecommerce website in India [2].
> This is the same firm well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom.
Not setting up a body shopping entity is hardly big loss to Reliance.
> that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future.
How have IT/Retail/Real Estate/ Banking/ Airlines and so on vision worked in India. I see it again none too well. So what's the big deal if Reliance's vision did not pan out.
> But the other stuff, the stuff that actually requires vision, is waiting to blow in India. ...
Same crap, different pile. Good that you have option to move around though.
> This bet on 4G/cloud/platforms etc is not because of some great vision of the future..
No shit. Neither was IT industry. It was just labor cost arbitrage.
> Plus there is the small issue of huge existing players who are not exactly lining up to bend over to the Ambanis.
Could be that they live in caves in Himalayas or deep under Arabian sea. Never heard of those "huge existing players" in India who are not bending over to Ambani.
Additionally: the problem of nepotism. The most recent shareholder AGM showed up in my YouTube recos. I didn't watch the video, but in the mouse-over preview there were only 3 people: Mukesh, his mother, and his wife.
- Non-U.S. citizens operate with a high degree of freedom online, although there are minimal restrictions on the collection of the data generated from doing so by private companies or the U.S. government.
- Non-U.S. companies are free to operate in the United States without restriction, and in other countries that follow the U.S.’s approach.
Is really through the roof given how the same site just recently argued how TikTok must either be sold to the US or prohibited in this:
The sad thruth is that the US is ok with a free internet as long as it is completely ruled by American companies and by extension the American surveillance state. If anything challenges that the piper will soon play a different tune.
I don't see hypocrisy. One is a statement on how things are. The other how the author thinks it should be.
The U.S. market is virtually ungated to new entrants, domestic or foreign. The author believes some gates should exist, specifically, with respect to TikTok.
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 consumer. It is not a barrier to "experimentation". We can't release medicine without proper FDA approval. Approval sucks, but your data going forward will become just as important as your health. "Endless dialogs" are the ugly way our service providers choose to overcome these regulations. It just goes to show, that the tech we're building today isn't transparent. That's a failure of private business, not increasing regulations.
As per Jio, India might be headed towards a future similar to China than the USA. Jio is highly state-centric and if anything, it parallels WeChat in a more free economy. It will likely eat SV internet companies, by letting them in, recreating their services, and using state-sponsored leverage to overcome barriers (not to mention talent).
If anything, Europe is creating a more sustainable framework for private companies and government intervention. Cross the moat, and you don't have to worry about castles. Just build a good product. That's what I'm reading.
Meanwhile, there are families in the USA who still don't have access to the internet. And no it's not Google's job to get us there. It's the government's. But our government doesn't intervene enough to support the necessary changes.
BTW a quick search of "Europe Internet Vision" - and I came across:
> Gigabit connectivity for all of the main socio-economic drivers
> uninterrupted 5G coverage for all urban areas and major terrestrial transport paths
> access to connectivity offering at least 100 Mbps for all European households.
Jio was created with the premise that "data is the new oil" (its parent company Reliance Industries is huge on Oil & Gas). This is seen from the time the company was created and named. The way "Jio" is written officially is a mirror image of "Oil", alluding to the fact that the data collected (or usurped) by it is the most valuable thing.
Jio also collects (or said it would collect) information about its users and their habits through traffic analysis and deep packet inspection. This would feed its ambitions in its other ventures in retail, entertainment and other market segments. India does not have a data privacy or data protection law. So this is all fair game for a company that's close to the government and is good at lobbying.
I feel like this article wasted an opportunity to discuss the seemingly larger trend - the splintering of the Internet - and focused too much on the (current) landscape for India (in contrast with US/CN/EU)
I'm not an economist or specialist, but if I were to guess where the tech[1] world is moving towards, I'd look at established and mature industries like automobile manufacturing and trading. Or, to stay in the trade of intangibles (that is, services), Finance. I don't think there will be 3 or 4 internets, I believe that little by little each country will have its own internet and barriers to connection similar to how goods/services flow today: sometimes freely, sometimes not. This brings huge implications to current assumptions of growth for tech companies.
At the same time I believe certain standards will be built, and agreements made, that will allow what we understand as the Internet today to exist between some or many jurisdictions, just like there are places where you can easily import cars or consume international financial services. In other words, I don't see Americans being blocked from reading Euro blogs or something like that.
In the non tech world, roughly speaking, we went from protectionism to (varying degrees of) free trade, while in the tech world we will go from free trade to (varying degrees of) free trade. A leveling of expectations, if you will.
[1] When I say tech I mean mostly sv-like internet-based companies. Hardware always followed the same pattern as everything else, with some changes in the near future due to concerns about backdoors and privacy.
> 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).
This still largely ignores the Data Sovereignty issue for non-US citizens. The US government still maintains control and oversight of US companies that rule the non-China markets. Data flow still runs through US data centres or even through US companies.
This is a huge con for citizens of non-US countries that simply don't want traffic and rules exported by the USG. Since, as non-US citizens, we're not subject to any of the "protections" afforded to a "US Person".
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.
Jio has kind of been like early Google, in that, at the point at which it revolutionized the industry, it was a monopoly that was welcomed by the masses.
The quality of service they offered was just so much better than a lot of places, that it didn't make sense to use anything else. A lot of places in India had BSNL which was nothing short of terrible.
It pushed the other private players to offer competitive services, and it honestly still feels nothing like a monopoly. (Jio has a 30% share)
Not disregarding the rest of the points against it, but adding some context.
While Jio was a revolution in India, this article misses a lot of context.
One of the primary reasons competitors could not respond was a combination of some trumped up scams which had them tied up in legal hassles when it came to allocations or frequencies for years, and because in a moment of some of the greatest idiocy every, the Indian legal system allowed the government to apply new taxation laws retroactively, leading to many competitors owing sums of many that was multiples of any possible revenue they earned and could have expected to earn in decades.
In a further move of genius, the courts declared, in a completely unenforceable ruling, that their parent foreign investors were liable for the taxes breaking limited liability, and trying to apply Indian “laws” (this wasn’t really a law but something the court made up) abroad.
It’s still not enforceable, but it froze any further investment from the majority of Jio’s competitors.
I found the analysis on winners and losers for the Indian model to be lacking in depth. Specifically, if the Jio Platform truly intends to be a platform (as described by the Bill Gates line[1]) then it's a huge win for Indian companies and startup ecosystem.
I wonder if FANGs will dramatically change their Indian operations and make their Indian subsidiaries the primary revenue engines with India first products and services.
On a tangential note, what do these FANG subsidiaries in India primarily focus on? Is it more sales and business operations? Or do they also do "real software engineering" as well? Asking for a friend :)
Can someone who is a domain expert comment on this statement I see being repeated often about Jio's ability to have a significantly lower cost structure by offering only 4G service with 'commodity hardware' versus the legacy players who are operating 2G/3G networks in conjunction with 4G? Is there a lot of truth to this or is this just something that the analysts have heard someplace and are now repeating it faithfully?
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 reminded of Russ Ackoff.
"“Science, technology, and economics focus on efficiency, but not effectiveness. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is important to an understanding of transformational leadership. Efficiency is a measure of how well resources are used to achieve ends; it is value-free. Effectiveness is efficiency weighted by the values of the ends achieved; it is value-full[...]
Put another way: efficiency is a matter of doing things right; effectiveness is a matter of doing the right things. For example, the more efficient our automobiles have become, the more of them are on city streets. The more of them on city streets, the more congestion there is. The efficiency of an act can be determined without reference to those affected by it. Not so for effectiveness. It is necessarily personal. The value of an act may be, and usually is, quite different for different individuals. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is also reflected in the difference between growth and development, and development is of greater concern to a transformational leader than growth.”
We don't need more internet companies for the sake of more internet companies, and more growth for the sake of growth. We need an internet that works for its citizens and members, and on that front I have still more trust in the old continent than I have even if China and the US keep producing a million more companies. If human rights and privacy isn't a vision I don't know what is.
> 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, feels like the worst of all possible outcomes. On one hand, large U.S. tech companies are winners, at least relative to everyone else: yes, all of the regulatory red tape increases costs (and, for targeted advertising, may reduce revenue), but the impact is far greater on would-be competitors. To put it in allegorical terms, the E.U. is restricting the size of the castle even as it dramatically increases the moat.
He's saying that under Europe's model, giant US tech companies are going to be even more locked in to dominance. The market will be less competitive, and have less room for European-grown companies to rise up. It's pretty hard to see how any regulations Europe might impose are going to substantially ameliorate the harmful economic effects of US companies dominating tech, and Europe's economy being relegated to the 20th century.
Is it in the geopolitical interest of the West and India to use the same Internet platforms? Take a look at what reddit and YouTube users have to say about India. That kind of uncensored hatred and racism will push India right into the arms of Russia and China.
It would be better for US-India relations if Indian Internet users also have local alternatives to choose from. Local alternatives where they don't have to hear what Cletus from Texas has to say about their country and religion.
Reliance isn't an innovator. It's more like a contractor with deep pockets and political contacts. Gets laws and permits easily and deploys bought technology.
This is very similar to what BSNL (the state telco) unions argue. The argument has been they got only 3G licenses when others got 4G , while there are some merits to it , let me tell you some examples on a common ground Broadband services.
I wanted a broadband at home (2011) and i preferred BSNL as i could use the monthly bills as address proof. The nearest office was just 2 KM away (First problem , you have to go there and submit an application). I did that , and it took 10 days and follow up to see if Broadband connection can be"given"
It was decided to be "given" after diligence. They gave me a connection , but i had to buy a router and take it to the office for PPPCoE and other configs (Second problem). After a year i moved houses , I was asked to go to an office that was 12 KM away to submit an application for cancellation (Problem 3)
I asked for a move of the connection itself , the answer was that the new home is in a new "jurisdiction" and this office was not authorized (Problem-4)
Well , i had enough and i got a new broadband (Jio did not exist then) . Called a number that was stuck on the wall of the Apartment , i got a connection activated the same day with a good router.
If you think i am ranting , don't get me started on what happens if it rains and the connection goes or a thunder fried my router once (Problems 6,7,8...)
How does it matter if there was no innovation or if the provider has deep pockets or political contacts ? What i think is it is not sufficient we have posters printed of this : https://stupidgyan.com/a-customer-is-the-most-important-visi... , what matters is living them
I wonder what will be the impact for blockchain- crypto-tevh adoption as these "splinternets" (regionets?) become reality.
I'm not saying it will be reality, but as Ben states I also sense forces that are adversarial to this "wild west" Internet.
I'm sure there's millions of blockchain transactions broadcasted or mined in China (inside GFW) but, could further tightening of control become an important obstacle to new decentralized networks?
> 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.
[+] [-] varbhat|5 years ago|reply
In 2016 Nov, Jio did amazing job by giving 4G data free for almost 4 months(10GB per day was limit,i guess. Also, 2G speed afterwards). It then introduced cheapest 4G 1GB/day plan for ₹400/3 months( 5.37 USD for 3 months) .Few other cellular network companies gradually went bankrupt, but others too introduced cheap plans(comparable to jio plan). This way,they revolutionized Indian internet and i am thankful to them for providing Cheap and Good internet.
But,it certainly was a curse for other ISPs(only jio,airtel(which bought few rival companies like tata docomo), and idea/Vodafone(both which got merged), state owned BSNL are remaining.
[+] [-] coder_seeker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] signal11|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coder_seeker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] castevictim|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unmole|5 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] blueblisters|5 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] KorematsuFred|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] newyankee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aluksi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harsh3195|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbmthakur|5 years ago|reply
Corruption in judiciary is widely known and it predates Adani, Reliace etc. Nothing much can be done here as the Constitution exempts contempt of court from freedom of speech.
> 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).
Similar predictions were made for Congress but things turned out differently. BJP has even lost some key states recently. That doesn't look like CCP in anyway.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] coder_seeker|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ece|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sassy_samurai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] op03|5 years ago|reply
It has done a great job deploying the network. Unmatched probably anywhere in the world. But that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future.
That set of skills to rollout a network at huge scale quickly, existed in India because of cut throat competition in the Telco space over 15 years.
But the skills to handle the sociological, political and psychological fallout from Scale that Zuckerberg, Dorsey et al have to deal with 24*7 does not exist in India.
They will get the Amazon/payments/delivery/cloud stuff,the easy stuff, right cuz the talent, cash, ambition and drive exists.
But the other stuff, the stuff that actually requires vision, is waiting to blow in India. If you think polarization/inequality/fake news etc etc in US is bad, go and visit India. I was there in Jan and the whole place was burning.
This bet on 4G/cloud/platforms etc is not because of some great vision of the future. It's really about crashing crude prices resulting in a huge pivot from their bread and butter Oil/Refining Business(they own the largest refinery in the world).
It can all collapse or go nowhere as that start hitting issues no one has dealt with before.
Plus there is the small issue of huge existing players who are not exactly lining up to bend over to the Ambanis.
To sum up, the Indian Internet or whatever emerges there is in for a unpredictable wild ride over the next few years and the current rose tinted view of Reliance matches what Facebook had in its early year. Expect that to change.
[+] [-] zapdrive|5 years ago|reply
There's two different Reliances. When the old Papa died, the two Ambani boys divided his empire into two. The older one kept the oil etc, and the younger one got telecommunications etc. There was some agreement of not competing for X years. The younger brother's telco failed miserably and had to be bailed out by the elder. After that the elder went ahead and start his own telco. That's why he's a little late in the game.
[+] [-] wobbly_bush|5 years ago|reply
This kind of gloom and doom messaging about India has been happening since the 1950s. This is more an emotion than actual facts. The equivalent of this in US is doubting the capabilities of SpaceX because of BLM protests - totally different issues.
[+] [-] entha_saava|5 years ago|reply
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 and Facebook spoiled this country. The elder generation naively believes what they read on whatsapp and that's terrible. The young generation is driven by emotions and identity politics not logic. But I think that's orthogonal to Jio the company.
[1] It is another thing that Opera Mini was freaking fast even on that network and didn't spend even 10MB per day for casual web page browsing. But if you want to get PDF or media content the internet was both slow and expensive.
[+] [-] flak48|5 years ago|reply
Just like TikTok can be banned, other services can eventually be banned too, under the garb of nationalism or whatever and India can potentially go the full China way with Reliance as the Indian Baidu or Alibaba, or at least as a major rent seeker in the ecosystem.
With enough protectionism a local company need not try to be a quality alternative to FB or Google.
For example of some Indian Government protectionist whimsy that affected Amazon and Walmart owned Flipkart take a look at [1]. Which 'coincidentally' came the same week that Reliance had announced plans to launch an ecommerce website in India [2].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/27/amazon-walmart-india-e-com...
[2] https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/asia-s-richest-man-o...
[+] [-] geodel|5 years ago|reply
Not setting up a body shopping entity is hardly big loss to Reliance.
> that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future.
How have IT/Retail/Real Estate/ Banking/ Airlines and so on vision worked in India. I see it again none too well. So what's the big deal if Reliance's vision did not pan out.
> But the other stuff, the stuff that actually requires vision, is waiting to blow in India. ...
Same crap, different pile. Good that you have option to move around though.
> This bet on 4G/cloud/platforms etc is not because of some great vision of the future..
No shit. Neither was IT industry. It was just labor cost arbitrage.
> Plus there is the small issue of huge existing players who are not exactly lining up to bend over to the Ambanis.
Could be that they live in caves in Himalayas or deep under Arabian sea. Never heard of those "huge existing players" in India who are not bending over to Ambani.
[+] [-] reactspa|5 years ago|reply
Additionally: the problem of nepotism. The most recent shareholder AGM showed up in my YouTube recos. I didn't watch the video, but in the mouse-over preview there were only 3 people: Mukesh, his mother, and his wife.
[+] [-] chvid|5 years ago|reply
- Non-U.S. citizens operate with a high degree of freedom online, although there are minimal restrictions on the collection of the data generated from doing so by private companies or the U.S. government.
- Non-U.S. companies are free to operate in the United States without restriction, and in other countries that follow the U.S.’s approach.
Is really through the roof given how the same site just recently argued how TikTok must either be sold to the US or prohibited in this:
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
The sad thruth is that the US is ok with a free internet as long as it is completely ruled by American companies and by extension the American surveillance state. If anything challenges that the piper will soon play a different tune.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|5 years ago|reply
I don't see hypocrisy. One is a statement on how things are. The other how the author thinks it should be.
The U.S. market is virtually ungated to new entrants, domestic or foreign. The author believes some gates should exist, specifically, with respect to TikTok.
[+] [-] catchmeifyoucan|5 years ago|reply
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 consumer. It is not a barrier to "experimentation". We can't release medicine without proper FDA approval. Approval sucks, but your data going forward will become just as important as your health. "Endless dialogs" are the ugly way our service providers choose to overcome these regulations. It just goes to show, that the tech we're building today isn't transparent. That's a failure of private business, not increasing regulations.
As per Jio, India might be headed towards a future similar to China than the USA. Jio is highly state-centric and if anything, it parallels WeChat in a more free economy. It will likely eat SV internet companies, by letting them in, recreating their services, and using state-sponsored leverage to overcome barriers (not to mention talent).
If anything, Europe is creating a more sustainable framework for private companies and government intervention. Cross the moat, and you don't have to worry about castles. Just build a good product. That's what I'm reading.
Meanwhile, there are families in the USA who still don't have access to the internet. And no it's not Google's job to get us there. It's the government's. But our government doesn't intervene enough to support the necessary changes.
BTW a quick search of "Europe Internet Vision" - and I came across:
> Gigabit connectivity for all of the main socio-economic drivers
> uninterrupted 5G coverage for all urban areas and major terrestrial transport paths
> access to connectivity offering at least 100 Mbps for all European households.
[+] [-] wtmt|5 years ago|reply
Jio also collects (or said it would collect) information about its users and their habits through traffic analysis and deep packet inspection. This would feed its ambitions in its other ventures in retail, entertainment and other market segments. India does not have a data privacy or data protection law. So this is all fair game for a company that's close to the government and is good at lobbying.
[+] [-] throw93|5 years ago|reply
You have a source for this, especially regarding deep packet analysis? Just curious.
[+] [-] vslira|5 years ago|reply
I'm not an economist or specialist, but if I were to guess where the tech[1] world is moving towards, I'd look at established and mature industries like automobile manufacturing and trading. Or, to stay in the trade of intangibles (that is, services), Finance. I don't think there will be 3 or 4 internets, I believe that little by little each country will have its own internet and barriers to connection similar to how goods/services flow today: sometimes freely, sometimes not. This brings huge implications to current assumptions of growth for tech companies.
At the same time I believe certain standards will be built, and agreements made, that will allow what we understand as the Internet today to exist between some or many jurisdictions, just like there are places where you can easily import cars or consume international financial services. In other words, I don't see Americans being blocked from reading Euro blogs or something like that.
In the non tech world, roughly speaking, we went from protectionism to (varying degrees of) free trade, while in the tech world we will go from free trade to (varying degrees of) free trade. A leveling of expectations, if you will.
[1] When I say tech I mean mostly sv-like internet-based companies. Hardware always followed the same pattern as everything else, with some changes in the near future due to concerns about backdoors and privacy.
[+] [-] spians|5 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] canistr|5 years ago|reply
This is a huge con for citizens of non-US countries that simply don't want traffic and rules exported by the USG. Since, as non-US citizens, we're not subject to any of the "protections" afforded to a "US Person".
[+] [-] hesarenu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] screye|5 years ago|reply
The quality of service they offered was just so much better than a lot of places, that it didn't make sense to use anything else. A lot of places in India had BSNL which was nothing short of terrible.
It pushed the other private players to offer competitive services, and it honestly still feels nothing like a monopoly. (Jio has a 30% share)
Not disregarding the rest of the points against it, but adding some context.
[+] [-] addicted|5 years ago|reply
One of the primary reasons competitors could not respond was a combination of some trumped up scams which had them tied up in legal hassles when it came to allocations or frequencies for years, and because in a moment of some of the greatest idiocy every, the Indian legal system allowed the government to apply new taxation laws retroactively, leading to many competitors owing sums of many that was multiples of any possible revenue they earned and could have expected to earn in decades.
In a further move of genius, the courts declared, in a completely unenforceable ruling, that their parent foreign investors were liable for the taxes breaking limited liability, and trying to apply Indian “laws” (this wasn’t really a law but something the court made up) abroad.
It’s still not enforceable, but it froze any further investment from the majority of Jio’s competitors.
[+] [-] wadkar|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if FANGs will dramatically change their Indian operations and make their Indian subsidiaries the primary revenue engines with India first products and services.
On a tangential note, what do these FANG subsidiaries in India primarily focus on? Is it more sales and business operations? Or do they also do "real software engineering" as well? Asking for a friend :)
[+] [-] mallipeddi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm reminded of Russ Ackoff.
"“Science, technology, and economics focus on efficiency, but not effectiveness. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is important to an understanding of transformational leadership. Efficiency is a measure of how well resources are used to achieve ends; it is value-free. Effectiveness is efficiency weighted by the values of the ends achieved; it is value-full[...]
Put another way: efficiency is a matter of doing things right; effectiveness is a matter of doing the right things. For example, the more efficient our automobiles have become, the more of them are on city streets. The more of them on city streets, the more congestion there is. The efficiency of an act can be determined without reference to those affected by it. Not so for effectiveness. It is necessarily personal. The value of an act may be, and usually is, quite different for different individuals. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is also reflected in the difference between growth and development, and development is of greater concern to a transformational leader than growth.”
We don't need more internet companies for the sake of more internet companies, and more growth for the sake of growth. We need an internet that works for its citizens and members, and on that front I have still more trust in the old continent than I have even if China and the US keep producing a million more companies. If human rights and privacy isn't a vision I don't know what is.
[+] [-] darawk|5 years ago|reply
But he actually makes a very specific point:
> This Internet, though, feels like the worst of all possible outcomes. On one hand, large U.S. tech companies are winners, at least relative to everyone else: yes, all of the regulatory red tape increases costs (and, for targeted advertising, may reduce revenue), but the impact is far greater on would-be competitors. To put it in allegorical terms, the E.U. is restricting the size of the castle even as it dramatically increases the moat.
He's saying that under Europe's model, giant US tech companies are going to be even more locked in to dominance. The market will be less competitive, and have less room for European-grown companies to rise up. It's pretty hard to see how any regulations Europe might impose are going to substantially ameliorate the harmful economic effects of US companies dominating tech, and Europe's economy being relegated to the 20th century.
[+] [-] ktrl|5 years ago|reply
It would be better for US-India relations if Indian Internet users also have local alternatives to choose from. Local alternatives where they don't have to hear what Cletus from Texas has to say about their country and religion.
[+] [-] rudiv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadykiller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cocoland2|5 years ago|reply
I wanted a broadband at home (2011) and i preferred BSNL as i could use the monthly bills as address proof. The nearest office was just 2 KM away (First problem , you have to go there and submit an application). I did that , and it took 10 days and follow up to see if Broadband connection can be"given" It was decided to be "given" after diligence. They gave me a connection , but i had to buy a router and take it to the office for PPPCoE and other configs (Second problem). After a year i moved houses , I was asked to go to an office that was 12 KM away to submit an application for cancellation (Problem 3) I asked for a move of the connection itself , the answer was that the new home is in a new "jurisdiction" and this office was not authorized (Problem-4)
Well , i had enough and i got a new broadband (Jio did not exist then) . Called a number that was stuck on the wall of the Apartment , i got a connection activated the same day with a good router.
If you think i am ranting , don't get me started on what happens if it rains and the connection goes or a thunder fried my router once (Problems 6,7,8...)
How does it matter if there was no innovation or if the provider has deep pockets or political contacts ? What i think is it is not sufficient we have posters printed of this : https://stupidgyan.com/a-customer-is-the-most-important-visi... , what matters is living them
[+] [-] 627467|5 years ago|reply
I wonder what will be the impact for blockchain- crypto-tevh adoption as these "splinternets" (regionets?) become reality.
I'm not saying it will be reality, but as Ben states I also sense forces that are adversarial to this "wild west" Internet.
I'm sure there's millions of blockchain transactions broadcasted or mined in China (inside GFW) but, could further tightening of control become an important obstacle to new decentralized networks?
[+] [-] avemuri|5 years ago|reply
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.