I live in USA but I am of Indian origin. My parents' apartment in India now has Fiber Internet with 80Mbps at 1000INR (15USD)/month. On my recent travel (Aug 2018), I had Jio and was working remotely. It is so cheap to get Jio. I had 0 issues and I was praising the Internet situation in India for the first time in the last decade. Seriously, good changes in Internet situation.<p>The top challenges for me right now to move back there are 1. Rampant corruption in state government offices (especially with land registrations, legal heir certificates) 2. Extreme levels of sanitation/drainage issues even in metros 3. Personal indiscipline of the people. There is now some transparency because of digital transformation/e-governance. I think in a decade, (1) and (2) will be addressed. It will take miracles to fix (3). Jio pretty much stepped up the competition and other providers are fighting hard to give good speeds. I am happy about indirect benefits of technology.
I'm on Jio and paying $5 for 84 days. I get<p>1. Free voice calls<p>2. 100 SMS/ day<p>3. 1.5GB High speed data/ day (20+ MBPS)- Post which unlimited @ 64 Kbps<p>4. Subscription to Jio apps like Music/ Movies/ News<p>The page shows pricing at $5.7, everyone I know has always received a discount voucher for Rs 50.
<a href="https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans" rel="nofollow">https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans</a>
About 5 months or so ago, one of my cousins called me ( video call on whatsapp ) from one of the snow covered mountains in the himalayan range. I know its not the top of mount everest and the place does see a decent tourist traffic, but still I was surprised by the fact that he could do a clear video call from that location. THIS, compared to me, sitting on a train ( not underground! ) just 10 miles away from London and no internet ( or network ) feels very very strange.<p>That is when I really understood how gamechanging Jio is to India. There is nothing even closely comparable to it anywhere in UK atleast and I believe the same is true for most developed countries.
We should be very thankful with current Net Neutrality situation in India thanks to Facebook's ill conceived plan of Free Basics which led to Strict Net Neutrality Laws in India. This had prevented Platform lock for Jio's chat , movies etc platforms, which ironically is very beneficial to FB Messenger and Whatspp's growth. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India</a>
Yes, he <i>is</i> the game changer when it comes to bringing fast and cheap internet in India (along with unlimited calls, data, 'national roaming' etc.). Unlike some countries like US, national roaming wasn't really free in India until Jio happened. So much that it forced <i>every other telecom company</i> in India to have similar plans (at least close to that) even if that meant huge downfall in their profit. Such is the power of Mukesh Ambani.<p>But, if someone is thinking the reason behind it is his philanthropy or something, forget about it. He's the biggest businessman in India, and just wants to capture all the market and all of its 'data'. Ambani wants his company to become India's Google.<p>That being said, thanks to him, literally (almost) everyone in India is on the internet these days.
However, there are downsides to this. To compete with Jio. All the carriers have massively decreased the prices to match Jio. This has increased congestion in all metro areas.<p>Things don't work when I most need it. I cannot book an Uber in the middle of the city. The uber drivers struggle to get the navigation right. I sometimes hear "All channels occupied" error when I'm calling. I never knew such an error existed.<p>I had tried Jio in the initial days. The coverage was spotty at best. No one I know use Jio as a primary connection. Most people use a dual SIM phone, which I don't have.<p>Even if the access of internet has increased, the overall quality of cell service has decreased at lot, no matter what the carrier.<p>Edit: Bypass the paywall - <a href="http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap-internetone-billionaire-changed-all-that-1536159916" rel="nofollow">http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/two...</a>
This is the worlds largest IPv6 network. We've been tracking it for APNIC since day one. It took India to over 40% of the worlds visible IPv6 users.
> Reliance has said little publicly about Jio, and even less about the potential for wide-scale data mining in a country where consumers have not, to date, made a big deal about online privacy. But top executives are clear on the opportunity.<p>> “It’s called Deep Packet Inspection, and what you can do with the analytics of that is mind-boggling,” said a senior Reliance executive, referring to a practice that digs into ‘packets’ of data created by computers for efficiency, mining them for information.<p><a href="https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio-idINKCN11611V" rel="nofollow">https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio-idINKCN...</a>
As a US Citizen of Indian origin, I can confirm this. For the past couple of years, whenever I travel to India, I don't even feel a difference in terms of Internet access. JIO specially has been a game changer. Indian telecommunication system is one of the best in the world and I would argue it beats mature markets like USA with its size and coverage for 1.2 billion people. Long way to go with many other basic necessities but when it comes to Internet/Telecom, I am super impressed.
From Steve Blank's recent blog post: [today’s theory is that] “massive capital infusion owns the entire market." This is yet another example.<p>Question is: What strategies can competitors adopt when faced with a market participant like this?
The Arnold Carnegie of India. Mr Carnegie funded hundreds of public libraries around the USA in the 1800s. He was a rags to riches 19th century steel billionaire in modern valuations.I have read dozens of testimonials of how small town middle class children use their libraries to enter ivy league universities and onto fantastic careers. I am one of these people.
THIS. For mere $6 I can have 1.5GB of data everyday for 84 days. Not to mention unlimited calls and 100 messages/day.<p>Edit: Also, they have free services like Cinema, TV, Music, Cloud, etc all included with that $6 plan.
This highlights how far the US is lagging behind in terms of Internet access and cost. Paying 60$/month or more for mediocre speeds is common even in major urban areas, due to the lack of competition. I live in the heart of Boston and only have one ISP I can buy service from. And there is no mobile alternative that offers (truly) unlimited, fast, and affordable data.
What is fascinating is that many Indians are discovering the mobile internet having never been on a desktop, or having never even had a land line. We are talking of 100s of millions of people here. Nearly 80% of internet access in India is via mobile.<p>It would be fascinating to see how their behaviour differs from those who have come to the internet via the normal route.<p>Besides the rates etc, what Jio has been able to do also is leapfrog straightaway to a pure LTE network, with no GSM at all, with VoLTE. Other providers have to maintain a legacy GSM network and also support LTE. They have gone from 0 to 215 million subscribers in just 2 years, which is incredible.<p>A lot of people have mentioned that Mukesh Ambani is doing this the second time - even the first launch had a major impact. At that time India had incredible high cellular rates, and the launch of Reliance Communications in early 2000s really changed the game for mobile connectivity in India. So this is the second time he has upset the apple cart.
Everyone is comparing Data Price in India to that of west/south. Considering it's so much cheaper in India, It's an irony that Indian's egress charges are 200% of the USA egress charges. [1]<p>Ex:<p>CloudFront egress for India: $0.170/GB.[Jio gives to user : $0.044/GB under ideal daily max consumption].<p>CloudFront egress for USA: $0.085/GB .... This is HALF of Indian rates.<p><a href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/" rel="nofollow">https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/</a>
The average quota is 1.5GB/day (for the latest recharge, they provided 3gb/day). That's a lot !<p>Some side effects of Jio have been :
1. average media consumption per user, specifically video(youtube, netflix, amazon prime) has gone up drastically
2. voip calls(audio & video calls on whatsapp, telegram) have gone up drastically !
3. A lot of users, especially youngsters i know, dont download content anymore, they stream it !
Its an interesting usage behaviour shift !<p>I think Jio's end game is content - getting Indian users to pay for content will be tricky though !(there have been very few successes - unlike the us, the average indian user doesnt like paying for digital subscription content ,
paid tech news and analysis site, <a href="https://the-ken.com/" rel="nofollow">https://the-ken.com/</a> is an exception)
Jio's dominance has also forced broadband providers to up their game. Airtel used to dominate in my part of the city, offering mediocre speeds and expensive plans.<p>About 1.5 years ago, my broadband bill was about $30 at 16mbps capped at 80GB/month from Airtel.<p>Now Airtel is offering me 100mbps at ~$13 capped at 250GB/month
I'm not a fan of Jio for multiple reasons.<p>Firstly, it used to insist on Aadhaar (the resident ID linked with biometrics) to provide a connection. I'm not sure if that has changed in the recent times and if it accepts other documents.<p>Secondly, as someone else pointed out here, Jio is an unsustainable model. While the prices charged by other telecoms/ISPs could go down a bit, what Jio is doing is creating a bloodbath where everyone sinks, including Jio. Jio already has huge debts. I don't think that bodes well for consumers, and would negatively affect how much things can improve in the coming years. This could result in a deep and long stagnation once all companies have no money and have huge debts. After all, telecom is a capital intensive business, combined with the operational expenses that are more specific to the Indian scenario (and not applicable in some developed economies) — like a competitor cutting the cables of another provider in a area and creating a mass outage, roads being dug without warning or planning to lay cables and not repaired later (sometimes resulting in fines to the company), etc.<p>Lastly, Jio is from Reliance, a big conglomerate that has a reputation of being unethical in many ways. [1] This may be considered as being compensated by some of the good that has been done by the company, but it still cannot be completely ignored. The 2007 Hindi movie "Guru" [2] is a fictionalized depiction of the beginnings of Reliance and about Dhirubhai Ambani (the founder).<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Scams" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Scams</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_(2007_film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_(2007_film)</a>
Jio is huge in India. Jio is specifically targeting rural areas. Areas which would have taken years for internet cable to reach. They have strong presence by maintaining cellular signal, Jio shops etc in these areas. Maybe that is the reason why India leads in number of people who first accessed Facebook on mobile.
When vodafone bought Hutch a few years back (so they could enter the Indian market), I saw an interview with the Vodafone ceo. He made a interesting comment. He said one of the things that would come from the deal is Hutch would should Vodafone how to offer services so cheaply. At the time the average monthly spend per subscriber in india was about $2. A fraction of what it was in the UK. So India was always ahead of the developed world in terms of pricing. But Jiro has definitely taking it to another level by offering crazy amounts of data with accompanying fast speeds for a price many Indians can afford.
India is quite well known for its price sensitive consumers. Jio has recognized and tackled that exceptionally well. Only today, on its 2nd anniversary, it announced even more free offers for its subscribers.<p>Full article here:
<a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-news/reliance-jio-has-a-surprise-for-you-on-its-2nd-anniversary/articleshow/65718799.cms" rel="nofollow">https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/teleco...</a>
Still there is no cheap and fast wired broadband in some areas of major cities in India. We tried multiple ISP from our area(one of the major city in India) and they all are bad. Sometimes our wifi does not work for multiple days or its too slow. Finally we decided to use only Jio mobile internet.We face the same issue at our office.<p>I hope Jio fiber change this situation.
Interestingly, Jio needs 4G supported phone and it won't work with 3G handset. So other (ex: airtel,vodafone etc) telecom operators still keep higher prices for 3G handset!<p>3g Data Mobile Recharge Plans:
Rs. 298 - 28 days - 1 GB 3G Data. Thats $5 for 1GB of data with 28 day validity.<p>But If you look at their 4G data plan it will be completely different thanks to Jio.
The impact of Jio is enormous. I travelled to certain villages where there are no roads.. there are not even proper bus facilities but inside the “huts” folks have 4G internet and wifi hot spots and i streamed netflix. I couldn’t believe myself.
Well that billionaire raised a loan of $14 Billion from the Indian Banks to start Jio and recently he again raised additional $500 Million, such huge investments rarely recover if at all. Previous 5 quarters are showing a loss.
In 2016 I used to pay Rs 98 for a GB OF data. Now Airtel, after following the lead of Jio, or getting forced to, offers 1.4GB data every day for Rs 300 for 70 days
What a crap title and article, which spends half its time bootlicking Mukesh Ambani and how he's so rich, when the second paragraph says:<p>> has shelled out $35 billion of the <i>company’s money</i><p>I'm also tired of all these publications that brainlessly give credit for achievements to the CEO like those that suck Elon Musk off for things his engineers have done. Not that I should expect anything better than a journal named after Wall Street.