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paulftw | 5 years ago

Yes, but don't forget that "Ambani family have close ties to the ruling government" and also Jio is "the only firm that won a pan-India 4G license, leveraging the superiority and cost-efficiency of 4G".

I'm super curious what technical reasons mandate that there can be only one 4G license in a country with 1.4 billion people. And how that affects competition in a country that has Corruption Perception Index equal to that of Morocco, Ghana, China or Benin.

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quantummkv|5 years ago

You seem to be insinuating that Jio is the only telecom that was given special all-India spectrum. And that is false. All the spectrum was offloaded in public auctions were everyone participated and bought spectrum.

Jio is not the only telecom in India with 4g spectrum or services. I personally use Airtel, and I get 4g everywhere I go without issues.

>I'm super curious what technical reasons mandate that there can be only one 4G license in a country with 1.4 billion people.

The confusion you have seems to stem from the fact that Jio advertises itself as India's only full 4g network. What that means is that the greenfield network build by Jio only uses and supports 4g networks and not the older 2g and 3g networks. So in other words, the Jio network is 4g exclusive for it's customers.

The older telecom are older and still operate old 2g and 3g networks so they cannot market themselves that way

paulftw|5 years ago

I simply quoted the original article

sidm83|5 years ago

TLDR version : Corruption can only get you so far but to become world class you need to be very good at what you do.

Longer version : Reliance/Ambani family have ties to pretty much the entire political spectrum in India and not just the current govt. This is one of the reasons why they have thrived since 70s when the group was started by Mukesh Ambani's (current CMD) father Dhirubhai. But this is not the only reason they have thrived, they started with polyester and captured the entire upstream upto crude refining. The Jamnagar refinery project was started in the 90s and was setup under the supervision of Mukesh. It is the largest refining complex in the world with some of the best refining margins in the world. Aramco almost bought a 20% stake in it recently, a deal which got suspended because of Covid.

As far as the pan India 4G license goes, it came at a time when others were still topping up their 2G and 3G licenses which were selling at a much higher premium due to the competition. It wasn't as if it was not on offer to others, it just did not make business sense for them at the time. And the license was auctioned around 2009-2010 while the current government only came to power in 2014. The conversion of pan India broadband license to 4G also happened before 2014. Heck, I remember seeing the Jio backbone OFC cables being laid in multiple cities before 2014. Corruption at the highest level (multiple cases involving multiple ministries, even reaching the Prime Minister) was one of the main reasons the previous UPA govt was routed in 2014.

Ref : https://web.archive.org/web/20130606064256/http://www.ground... https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas...).

harsh3195|5 years ago

There are multiple 4G licenses in India. Jio just has a majority in market share.