
Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That - brkumar
https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap-internetone-billionaire-changed-all-that-1536159916
======
lnkmails
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.

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.

~~~
iamshs
Jio has enabled a digital revolution, just like Reliance Infocomm did by
making all incoming calls free back in 2005 I think.

Jio has also made sure that my youtube homepage is filled with soft porn. It
is an absolute scourge.

WhatsApp rumour mongering has increased a lot with lynchings happening based
on the fact that law and order can’t keep up pace with technology.

I also see that lots of unemployed people now are just engrossed in WhatsApp
videos nearly all day. It should have made job searching easier, but wages are
depressed to such a degree that people just lose all hope and find solace in
the mindless videos. Indirect consequences of the technology too.

~~~
pkhagah
Can you back up that lynching/WhatsApp with some numbers or statistics? Riots
used to happen left and right in India for before 90's. A famous politician or
actor died, a politician resigned or doing protest, religious demonstrations
etc. Lot of the city will be closed. This situation got a lot better after
economic liberalization and what followed. Is there a reversal to this trend
that you are talking about?

[https://twitter.com/ShamikaRavi/status/1034116009794392066](https://twitter.com/ShamikaRavi/status/1034116009794392066)

~~~
iamshs
First, regarding the tweet you posted: It ignores the recent years. There are
still local maximas in that graph. Second, it only concerns riots and leaves
out any other type of violence. But that will be more clear upon how the
author interprets 'riots'. It is just a graph without any explanation. Third,
I could not find source of the data myself, as the graph is not from a peer
reviewed journal so it can be easily discarded. Fourth, tweet is from a person
who serves in the current government aka it is like Sarah Sanders, a vested
interest always defending the government.

Communal violence under Modi has increased, even if it is a local maxima but
their rhetoric is acerbic towards minorities and it shows. Now onto the
communal violence sources:-

1\. [http://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/07/27/the-rising-tide-
of...](http://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/07/27/the-rising-tide-of-
intolerance-in-narendra-modis-india/)

2\. [https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-
affairs/co...](https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-
affairs/communal-violence-increases-28-under-modi-govt-yet-short-of-upa-
high-118020900128_1.html)

3\. [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-
natio...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-
nation/marginal-rise-in-communal-violence-since-narendra-modi-government-took-
over/articleshow/50113484.cms)

WhatsApp specific lynchings:

1\. [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/16/asia/india-whatsapp-
lynch...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/16/asia/india-whatsapp-lynching-
intl/index.html)

2\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-18/lynch-
mob...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-18/lynch-mobs-are-
india-s-problem-not-whatsapp-s)

3\. [https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-dont-
bla...](https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-dont-blame-
whatsapp-lynch-mobs)

------
sgr
I'm on Jio and paying $5 for 84 days. I get

1\. Free voice calls

2\. 100 SMS/ day

3\. 1.5GB High speed data/ day (20+ MBPS)- Post which unlimited @ 64 Kbps

4\. Subscription to Jio apps like Music/ Movies/ News

The page shows pricing at $5.7, everyone I know has always received a discount
voucher for Rs 50. [https://www.jio.com/en-
in/4g-plans](https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans)

~~~
pnenp
Had to re-read to see 1.5 GB _per day_. Wow. I used to think we had it good in
Austria (10GB for €10 _per month_ ). But that is fantastic.

~~~
proginthebox
In Europe, the wired broadbands are cheap and fast. In India, there is no hope
for cheap and fast wired broadband due to poor planning. Hence the craze for
4G. Also, the rates are marginal. For a long time, the rates induced loss for
companies.

~~~
shripadk
That's incorrect. Jio has already come out with high speed wired broadband
called JioGigaFiber: [https://jiofiber.co.in/](https://jiofiber.co.in/). Poles
have been erected in my locality and pretty much the entire city. It's way
cheaper than the current broadband I'm using (Hathway) and I'll be shifting to
it once it launches. Currently it's being rolled out in phases across the
country: [https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/2018/09/06/jio-
gigafiber-c...](https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/2018/09/06/jio-gigafiber-
claims-good-response-people-900-cities-experience-high-speed-broadband-
report/)

"JIO GIGA FIBER will be the largest greenfield fixed-line broadband rollout
anywhere in the world, with rollout happening in 1,100 cities of India
simultaneously"

------
ganarajpr
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.

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.

~~~
r_singh
This reminds me of how a friend from SF texted me saying he missed 4G speeds
in India. I genuinely thought he was being sarcastic at first.

Another thing hard to ignore is the cost disparity between data in India and
the developed nations; data in India is cheaper by at least a few times.

------
acd10j
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.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India)

------
piyush_soni
Yes, he _is_ 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 _every other telecom company_ 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.

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.

That being said, thanks to him, literally (almost) everyone in India is on the
internet these days.

~~~
Investopad
Hi Piyush. Great points but would like to say that not even half of India has
access to internet just yet. While Jio is certainly expediting this growth, we
have a long way to go.

You can find my reference here:
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/number-indian-internet-users-will-reach-500-million-by-
june-2018-iamai-says/articleshow/62998642.cms)

~~~
kamaal
One reason could be lack of very cheap Smartphones. I mean like good sub 1000
rupees phones.

India has a great Android phone ecosystem and the sub 10,000 rupee phones are
really good. But 10,000 rupees is still quite a bit of cash for many people.

~~~
piyush_soni
In my personal experience, poor population actually doesn't care about
'smartphone', though they care about 'Whatsapp'. Thankfully, Jio is bringing
around 2000 INR (~28 USD) feature phones too, that will still run Whatsapp and
Facebook etc.

------
suhastech
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.

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.

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.

Even if the access of internet has increased, the overall quality of cell
service has decreased at lot, no matter what the carrier.

Edit: Bypass the paywall -
[http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/two...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-
years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap-internetone-billionaire-changed-all-
that-1536159916)

~~~
fnatreq
That's the sad truth about unlimited plans. You can't beat physics. Sadly most
people don't understand this and think ISPs are being greedy.

~~~
drb91
People aren’t the ones claiming the plan is unlimited, whatever that means.
Are the ISPs confused?

------
ggm
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.

------
denzil_correa
> 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.

> “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.

[https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio-
idINKCN...](https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio-
idINKCN11611V)

~~~
acd10j
This is why it very important to have HTTPS everywhere.

------
codegeek
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.

------
carlsborg
From Steve Blank's recent blog post: [today’s theory is that] “massive capital
infusion owns the entire market." This is yet another example.

Question is: What strategies can competitors adopt when faced with a market
participant like this?

~~~
sgr
The Indian telecom industry had another major shock back in 2009, when a new
firm - DoCoMo - introduced a 'Per-second' billing.

Today, Tata DoCoMo barely exists. Some competitors introduced a similar
version of billing, others just waited them out.

[https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/biggest-
in...](https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/biggest-indian-
innovation---tata-docomo/story/205825.html)

~~~
IntelMiner
Is DoCoMo still big in Japan? They've got an interesting history with various
projects there. They were originally the ones who hosted the "mobile" side for
Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal in Japan.

Connecting a Gameboy Color to a cellular phone and having it make HTTP-type
requests to Nintendo servers for data, way back in 1999 or so

~~~
tokyoHacker
NTT - DoCoMo is one of the major providers here in Japan. The others being AU
and Softbank. Having said that there are lots of new entrants who offer
cheaper rates than the incumbents. They ride on the signal of the major
players. I guess its kind of win-win for all. But the rates I pay is close to
$10/GB. Unlimited rate for those who are ready to pay $50 or more per month (
not sure about the current rates. Could be a bit outdated)

------
peter303
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.

~~~
eaenki
Andrew Carnegie would be worth US$372 billion in 2014 dollar. Yes, with a B.

------
atomicnumber1
THIS. For mere $6 I can have 1.5GB of data everyday for 84 days. Not to
mention unlimited calls and 100 messages/day.

Edit: Also, they have free services like Cinema, TV, Music, Cloud, etc all
included with that $6 plan.

~~~
vuln
It's not 'free' it's being subsidized by someone somewhere.

~~~
tzs
Almost everything that is "free" is actually subsidized, so there would be no
point in even having the word "free" if subsidization disqualified things from
being "free".

------
philipps
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.

~~~
tuxguy
My gut says Google is eyeing an isp play . That would be a godsend for
consumers, although dont know if telecom regulators like the FCC and anti
monopoly regulators a would clear such a proposal.

------
sseth
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.

It would be fascinating to see how their behaviour differs from those who have
come to the internet via the normal route.

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.

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.

------
ramshanker
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]

Ex:

CloudFront egress for India: $0.170/GB.[Jio gives to user : $0.044/GB under
ideal daily max consumption].

CloudFront egress for USA: $0.085/GB .... This is HALF of Indian rates.

[https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/)

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
CloudFront isn't exactly the cheapest CDN. BunnyCDN is .01/US for their
premium and half that for their volume service. India would only be .03/US
(granted with only one datacenter in the South).

------
tuxguy
The average quota is 1.5GB/day (for the latest recharge, they provided
3gb/day). That's a lot !

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 !

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, [https://the-ken.com/](https://the-ken.com/)
is an exception)

~~~
iamgopal
The real intention is to earn by selling data centre bandwidth to internet
applications provider such as Google and Facebook when India government make
it compulsory for them to have indian user data inside Indian border, this is
the direction where both Jio and government are slowly moving, if you read
recent news on indian news sites and read between the line.

------
puranjay
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.

About 1.5 years ago, my broadband bill was about $30 at 16mbps capped at
80GB/month from Airtel.

Now Airtel is offering me 100mbps at ~$13 capped at 250GB/month

~~~
sgr
+1

I'm paying $15/ month for 100mbps with FUP at 750GB/ month

[https://www.actcorp.in/personal/fibernet/plans/hyderabad](https://www.actcorp.in/personal/fibernet/plans/hyderabad)

~~~
puranjay
I recently switched to a local internet provider. INR 850/month (~$12) for
50mbps with no download limit.

Internet in India has suddenly become really good. Made my work so much easier

------
wtmt
I'm not a fan of Jio for multiple reasons.

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.

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.

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).

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Scams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Scams)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_(2007_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_\(2007_film\))

------
kisslaay
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.

------
athirnuaimi
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.

------
Investopad
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.

Full article here:
[https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/teleco...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-
news/reliance-jio-has-a-surprise-for-you-on-its-2nd-
anniversary/articleshow/65718799.cms)

------
worldexplorer
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.

I hope Jio fiber change this situation.

------
giis
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!

3g Data Mobile Recharge Plans: Rs. 298 - 28 days - 1 GB 3G Data. Thats $5 for
1GB of data with 28 day validity.

But If you look at their 4G data plan it will be completely different thanks
to Jio.

------
pvelagal
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.

------
pankajdoharey
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.

~~~
kamaal
Jio was never profitable from start. It won't be profitable anytime soon
either.

Please note this isn't first time Mukesh Ambani is dipping his feet into
telecommunications. He did before too, but he lost that business to Anil
Ambani.

Apparently Jio is like his dream project.

~~~
sbmthakur
> Jio was never profitable from start. It won't be profitable anytime soon
> either.

I don't get this. Jio has been posting profits for a while[1].

1\.
[https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/rel...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/reliance-
jio-infocomm-posts-third-straight-quarterly-profit/articleshow/65172420.cms)

~~~
kamaal
Its profit if you completely discount away the debt they have :) Or if you
think they started at 0 investment. Or if you thinking on lines of completely
discounting their initial capital 'investment' by not calling it Debt.

It is debt nevertheless.

Its like say took like a crore to start a business, and you are making like a
profit of 50000 a month. Its profit, but it isn't exactly profit in an
absolute sense, given you have to pay back 1 cr.

The thing about companies like Reliance is they can afford to do this. They
have debt of $37
billion([https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/cash-
rich-...](https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/cash-rich-
reliance-looks-to-raise-3-billion-as-13-billion-debt-matures/64542402)) and
they want to raise another $3 billion.

So yes, they post profits. Based on what your definition of profit is.

------
davchana
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

------
HipstaJules
Italy here: I'm paying 10€ per unlimited calls and 60gb/months. Looks like we
are cheaper than India!

~~~
waivek
That's not cheaper. Jio can give that at half the price for thrice the
duration

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/Q4HrI](http://archive.is/Q4HrI)

~~~
frereubu
I'm getting a Cloudflare error message from that link.

~~~
ryanlol
This is because you’re using cloudflare DNS.

Archive.is/fo/li blocks cloudflare DNS.

~~~
666lumberjack
Do you know why that is?

~~~
msravi
Apparently because archive.is wants cloudflare to pass on (most of) _your IP
address_ to them for DNS resolution, and cloudflare won't play ball...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743154)

------
tuxguy
why is this article behind a wsj paywall ?

~~~
tim333
try this bookmarklet

    
    
        javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

~~~
tuxguy
thanks a ton ! this is so neat !

------
madengr
Once upon a time, the USA had fast, cheap Internet. One billionaire changed
that.

------
cooper12
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:

> has shelled out $35 billion of the _company’s money_

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.

~~~
seunosewa
It really doesn’t bother me because he is the chairman, managing director and
largest shareholder of the company in question. Leaders get credit for the
things they ask their followers to do all the time. No one can actually
accomplish anything significant without lots of help from other people.

