
Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-takes-5-7-billion-stake-in-indias-jio-11587521592
======
a-ve
This is bad.

One executive at Jio already confirmed they use DPI to monitor traffic on
their networks, and their apps, be it their MyJio, JioTV, JioNews, etc. ask
for almost every permission there is.

Also, it looks like the Zuck hasn't given up on his internet.org thing yet. He
failed the first time, might as well join hands with a person who literally is
the Government in India.

Can't switch to Idea because they were hacked by the NSA and they're about to
go bankrupt, so I guess long live the Jio-Airtel duopoly!

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
> _a person who literally is the Government in India_

Out of the loop: can you clarify what you mean by this?

~~~
a-ve
It's mainly due to his disregard for any rules that may exist.

The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio:
[https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone-
gro...](https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone-group-ceo-
terms-trai-predatory-pricing-rule-unfair/articleshow/63082025.cms)

Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance
Industries Fields: [https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas-
shift...](https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas-shifted-to-
reliance-industries-fields-d-m-1246122)

They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it:
[https://thewire.in/economy/modi-reliance-jio-
advertisement](https://thewire.in/economy/modi-reliance-jio-advertisement)

~~~
TriNetra
You are over-blowing his control: My quick search brings following two things
which is opposite to what this thread is claiming.

1\. Reliance Jio may not be pleased with govt's spectrum moratorium to telcos:
[https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance-
ji...](https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance-jio-wont-
happy-with-govts-moratorium-telcos/story/390780.html)

2\. India Trying to Stop Reliance From Selling Assets, Times Says:
[https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to-
stop...](https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to-stop-
reliance-from-selling-assets-times-says)

~~~
a-ve
Telecoms in India are in a tremendous amount of debt. So much so, Vodafone and
Idea had to merge but still they have immense financial problems. They are
asking for the moratorium because Jio gave away their services for free,
undercutting every player there is and the telecom regulator did nothing about
it. WRT your first link, it was posted on November 21, 2019. This year the
Supreme Court ordered the telecoms to pay their dues:
[https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-
news/sc...](https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-news/sc-
directs-telecoms-to-deposit-dues-by-march-17/articleshow/74129276.cms)

As to your second link (Dec 23, 2019), yes, the Govt. did try to stop the 20%
sale to Aramco, but "Aramco officials and bankers on the deal have been
working at Reliance’s offices in Mumbai" says otherwise:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance-
aramco-said-to-accelerate-refinery-stake-sale-talks)

~~~
TriNetra
Regarding telcos dues, AFAIK those companies have been avoiding the dues for
decades and they must be held accountable some day isn't it? I can't comment
on whether or not TRI should have intervened when JIO started offering free
services - if it was allowed as per the regulation intervening by TRI could
have given a message that it was acting for protecting existing players and if
it wasn't allowed by regulations, Telcos would have gone to court.

Regarding the on-going talks of selling asset, since court has already ordered
Reliance to reveal assets, they just can't do away with whatever is the
liability set. Indian court system is not a joke.

My original point was that Reliance or Mukesh do not rule India; yes they are
clever and do lobbying as any other capitalist does but they don't control the
nation or gov.

------
dingdongding
So Facebook paid 5.7 billion dollar to buy "influence" in India. The biggest
influencer of India is Mukesh Ambani who has strong influence in Indian
politics. Now it will be a matter of months and WhatsApp payments will get
regulatory approval to go ahead to launch WhatsApp payments in India. That is
the boss move here IMO. Jio is just a way to solve for regulatory hurdles in
India.

~~~
haltingproblem
Jumping the gun here. Jio's founder, Ambani has his own ambitions in this
space and he is highly unlikely to carry water for FB. This is akin to saying
when Microsoft took a stake in Apple that they would carry water for Apple.

They are frenemies at best and outright competitors. FB gets to deploy its
cash hoard into a relatively safe and perhaps lucrative investment and buy
some insurance to being treated fairly on Jio's platform.

~~~
just42
So no solace, because it's even worse. Jio is a bigger danger than FB to us
Indians, we just don’t seem to realize/care (as in being an information
monopoly). I don’t think even Jio realizes it. They may believe that they are
doing God’s service in providing affordable 21st century services to the
masses. But that’s how the really bad stuff usually starts.

~~~
haltingproblem
Twice Mukesh Ambani has built telecom services that have lowered prices by an
_order of magnitude_ and _greatly expanded coverage_. Reliance Communications
which Anil ran into the ground was built by Mukesh and changed the competitive
landscape the first time around. Jio did it again and now India has the
cheapest data in the world.

I am struggling to understand what exactly is the problem and why is Jio a
danger? Because in the future they might become some unknown danger to morals
and economic well being of Indians/humanity. Crush freedom in some
inexplicable way that you cannot imagine but are sure they will. I am
genuinely curious.

~~~
just42
I am not sure why I am biting this, but here goes: If you are the only
Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter if you are a private
entity or the Govt.

I can't satisfy your curiosity because I too also sincerely don't know what
flavor of undesirable behavior a monopoly creates but that they create bad
behavior is as intuitive to me as is breathing to anyone else.

A first person anecodote which doesn't necessarily further my point but still
- I had Jio fiber installed for a relative, I was visiting in a small north
Indian town - unbelievable price, offering, everything great. But it took me 3
days of multiple hours on the phone, and I still couldn't access Hackernews,
or reddit or even New York Times. Pages for these and quite a few other sites
just wouldn't load. The first canned response - 'Reliance only blocks what the
Govt. has told it to block' (paraphrasing). I didn't anymore have the energy
to analyze if it was a technical problem, casual censorship or just customer
service issues because of fast scaling.

~~~
enitihas
> If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter
> if you are a private entity or the Govt.

The only thing worse than a monopoly is the non existence of the particular
service.

Before Jio, reasonable speed Internet was non existent in rural India. The
plans were priced so high that using Opera Mini with cloud compression was a
reasonable decision, to save on data cost. I used to switch off 3G to ensure
data doesn't get all consumed.

> But it took me 3 days of multiple hours on the phone, and I still couldn't
> access Hackernews, or reddit or even New York Times.

What do you mean by "not load"? Are you sure this was not something unrelated
to Jio?

~~~
just42
"not load" \- nothing happens and eventually connection timed out
(unfortunately I don't have exact recollection if there was a message or just
nothing happened). But I did research it and closest evidence I found that
this was not a technical issue but deliberate blocking was from some
discussion on Center for Internet Security: [https://cis-india.org/internet-
governance/blog/reliance-jio-...](https://cis-india.org/internet-
governance/blog/reliance-jio-is-using-sni-inspection-to-block-websites)

------
achow
Mark Zuckerberg in his FB post:

There's a lot going on in the world right now, but I wanted to share an update
on our work in India. Facebook is teaming up with Jio Platforms -- we're
making a financial investment, and more than that, we're committing to work
together on some major projects that will open up commerce opportunities for
people across India.

India is home to the largest communities on Facebook and WhatsApp, and a lot
of talented entrepreneurs. The country is in the middle of a major digital
transformation and organizations like Jio have played a big part in getting
hundreds of millions of Indian people and small businesses online.

This is especially important right now, because small businesses are the core
of every economy and they need our support. India has more than 60 million
small businesses and millions of people rely on them for jobs. With
communities around the world in lockdown, many of these entrepreneurs need
digital tools they can rely on to find and communicate with customers and grow
their businesses. This is something we can help with -- and that's why we're
partnering with Jio to help people and businesses in India create new
opportunities.

I want to thank Mukesh Ambani and the entire Jio team for their partnership.
We're looking forward to getting started.

[https://www.facebook.com/zuck](https://www.facebook.com/zuck)

~~~
letmelurkaround
This isn’t a good thing for India’s Digital Transformation.

------
sumanthvepa
I'll take a contrarian view. This is good! All investment into India is good.
(Yes even Chinese investment.) We are a poor capital starved country. We need
every bit of cash we can get and that $5.7B will generate employment and
create another strong telecom player. I strongly supported net neutrality in
2016 in India, but circumstances have changed. Jio needs the money, as does
India. The poor cannot afford principles.

~~~
throwaway122378
_The poor cannot afford principles_

??? Really how much do you get paid to shill that hard

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN?
It unfortunately looks like you've been doing that quite a bit, and it's not
what this site is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

~~~
throwaway122378
Apologies if it comes out as such. My only intention is to make thought
provoking comments

------
yalogin
From that Zuckerberg statement it feels like a payment play. FB and Jio will
launch a payments system possibly using their blockchain and I will also bet
they will integrate deeply with whatsapp, there by cloning wechat. Right now
the only payments system in India is paytm and Jio is in a great position to
disrupt that. They get to give fb a shot and get a cut of the revenue if it
works.

~~~
rathish_g
Yes, its a payment play, but not using Bitcoin. WhatsApp is trying to roll out
a UPI based payment solution in India for 2 years now.

Google, on the other hand, rolled out Google Pay (Previously Tez) based on UPI
platform by teaming up with major banks. Its really popular these days.

------
achow
With this FB becomes largest investor in any single India tech company - so
largest player in this segment.

Previously Softbank was the largest because of its $2.5B investment in
Flipkart (which was India's answer to Amazon.. last year Walmart bought it and
Softbank had a successful exit).

------
searchableguy
I wish government would stop these foreign investment sometimes especially
into important pillars of the internet. I am okay with small startups getting
investment but this is just bad. Jio is already terrible at tracking and they
are the first ones to censor you when some high court cries foul.

~~~
kapilkchaurasia
India is a developing nation and it will have to depend on foreign investment
unless zero corruption government help local business out. What is required to
do that ministry keep a close eye before agreeing on such deals and afterwards
like in case of internet.org initiatives.

>I am okay with small startups getting investment They can also be worst.
During the period April 2015-March 2020, of the 30 Indian unicorns (companies
with over $1 billion valuation), 18 were funded by Chinese companies and we
all know how much china firms is controlled by their government.

What India required is: 1\. Company themselves don't sellout morality for
money. 2\. Regulators keep a close eyes. 3\. Indian citizen too make their
voice heard on wrong things.

~~~
searchableguy
Small startups are not unicorns. Small startups don't have the ability to
censor you as much as your ISP especially if all your friends and family use
the same one. India's net neutrality laws are already a joke when nothing is
enforced and you can't access normal sites on jio in some states. I am talking
about reddit, github, and heck even stack.

What india needs is to invest in their own businesses and stop using imported
goods just because they are cheap. They are cheap because their countries
invested in infrastructure to make it possible while indian government
continues to raise taxes on imported goods while doing nothing about the
abysmal lack of infra and good education. It hinders those who need imported
stuff because it's not available in india. The regulation is a joke too. We
don't need more regulations than we already have. We need less but have them
more strictly enforced and accessible so people can actually see stuff rather
than hearing it from a lawyer who isn't updated on the issue themself

~~~
sbmthakur
In which state GitHub cannot be accessed on Jio's network?

------
sn41
And India's fight against Facebook's walled garden, the Round 1 of which, it
had won so admirably in 2016, now faces a setback. With this, and the
crumbling of BSNL, a good part of India's telecom infrastrucure is now
controlled by foreign players. Anyone who remembers Marc Andreesen's execrable
remark on colonialism should be concerned.

~~~
sbmthakur
Jio is building most of its 5G tech without involvement of foreign players.

~~~
econcon
That seems impossible or is 5g tech that easy? They are going to source all
equipment from one or another European country at the end.

------
webmobdev
Wow! Very interesting news. (Bad for us consumers ofcourse.)

Reliance Jio is focusing on vertical integration by even building and rolling
out their own 5G tech ([https://content.techgig.com/jio-develops-in-
house-5g-tech-ai...](https://content.techgig.com/jio-develops-in-
house-5g-tech-aims-to-reduce-cost-and-foreign-
dependency/articleshow/74548652.cms)). And I am sure they plan to expand to
other countries in 5 years or so. It will be very interesting to watch how
they change the telecom industry in these countries too, in the future.

Speculating because I don't know the details, but feels like Facebook got the
better end of the deal - FB bought WhatsApp, a messaging platform, for $19
billion. $5.7 Billion for 10% stake in one of the largest mobile network in
the world sounds a real bargain ... right?

~~~
missedthecue
>(Bad for us consumers ofcourse.)

explain?

~~~
webmobdev
\- They've crippled the indian telecom industry by driving out many
competitors through their anti-competitive behaviour of offering FREE services
for nearly a year under the guise of "testing" their network. They were aided
in this by the government who ignored the protests from the other players.

\- Then they offered services for very LOW prices.

\- Once the competitors were driven out, they've RAISED prices. And are now
lobbying with the government to reduce inter-connection charges and to stop
"Free" calls which their remaining competitors are still offering.

\- They are also extremely INVASIVE in collecting data on you through their
services, apps, and even deep packet inspection of your secure connections.
They are also suspected of creating shadow profiles and trying to link it to
real profiles by data from their other businesses (e.g. Reliance Retail
stores) and also through data they purchase from data brokers.

\- They lobbied AGAINST NET-NEUTRALITY and tried to offer Facebook services
for free, but luckily for us failed.

\- I can bet that Facebook and Jio will now SHARE DATA and use each others
service more. Goodbye privacy. For ever.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
India went from charging some of the costliest data plans in the world to some
of the cheapest, thanks to Jio.

What exactly was holding back the hands of the entrenched players when they
charged INR 10 per MB of data?

~~~
intended
How?

India had some of the cheapest plans in the world, and the indian telecom
market is famous for having the lowest if not among the lowest ARPU rates in
the world.

Do you have a source or reference point for this?

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked-
fast...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap-
internetone-billionaire-changed-all-that-1536159916)

~~~
intended
I checked that, and the difference was that we went from among the cheapest
internet costs in 2017, to even lower.

2017 figures and 2019 figures are significantly different if you are poor,
however that doesn't mean that prices were high.

And there isn't anything like a free lunch - Reliance has achieved these costs
through a variety of means, both legal and supra legal.

Their "creative" ways to abuse the network testing period for example (and the
non response from the regulator), their use and harvesting of private data to
inform other parts of their empire and their efforts to take over the market
bode ill for India.

Remember that Net neutrality was won because we got lucky and there was enough
political capital for people like Nilekani to also advocate for it through the
government machinery.

However when NN 3.0 happens, Reliance will not let it pass.

With a market without competition, they will succeed - since they have to
spend less effort competing and can afford their lobbying.

------
wewake
This is a proxy move by Facebook for all the same shady motives that led to
Internet.org. GoI should look into this very carefully from a long term
perspective of India's internet space. Zuck can't be allowed to take hold of
Jio's scale in India.

------
kumarvvr
This is too much control for one company.

This is really bad for democracy.

JIO is deeply embedded into the rural populace. Exactly the ones who are
vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.

And facebook just bought a key to the gates.

~~~
mycall
Does India have less free speech protections?

~~~
searchableguy
Probably but are laws real without enforcement?

I have seen few people getting beaten up badly and two dying due to mob
killing them with law enforcement involved for speaking against "religious
stuff" and a politician.

Just a recent thing that got some attention -
[https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1251818372343439361?s=...](https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1251818372343439361?s=19)

But I assure you, this happens way more in small towns and villages.

~~~
screamingninja
Your Twitter reference has nothing to do with what you described above. Nice
try with the rumor mill.

~~~
newyankee
Very disingenuous reply, you can clearly see what happened in the video.
Unconfirmed reports from different media sources (which hesitated to report
this extensively for obvious reasons) indicated rumors from the fact that they
were organ harvesting to that they were thieves etc.

------
sidcool
As an Indian, I find this scary. Govt and Jio has deep ties.

------
_nedR
The idea that the Facebook has a direct data pipeline into Jio's 370 million
subscribers and vice versa and that Jio has a direct pipeline to the Indian
govt. is a very frightening thought.

------
Fiveplus
Why does Zuck want India so bad? [this is rhetorical, we know the business
potential] Is this some sort of ego-compensation ever since China sent him
home?

~~~
searchableguy
Because most indians will glady sell their data for saving up a dollar?

Inequality is a great thing and it works pretty good for ad networks as well
as social media. The population hops to the cheapest solution while locking in
the others with them due to the network effect.

~~~
davchana
> Because most indians will glady sell their data for saving up a dollar?

Keep it it mind that a single dollar can buy cooked meal for two persons, or
major ingredients like flour rice potato etc for 3-4 persons.

Obviously not everybody is so poor in India, but World Bank defines lower
middle class household as somebody earning $10-50 a day [1].

Personally, I had used Jio Sim cards, prepaid, in data dongle, but never
installed any of their apps because never felt like I needed. And yes, the
reason was exactly you described, best rates, about $5 for a month, for 3GB
daily.

Jio is also memed as Oil (Mirror image of Jio), because Data is the New Oil.

[1].
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India#cite_note-7](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India#cite_note-7)

------
djdjs
The fact that Zuckerberg and Facebook are making this bet, using the data they
have, suggests that the Modi era will continue for quite a while. Ambani’s
fortunes are closely tied to Modi.

This is as much a political statement as a financial one.

~~~
haltingproblem
Ambani fared well under every govt. Can you cite what this govt has done that
has been favorable to Ambani?

------
sairamkunala
non paywalled link -
[https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/facebook-...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/facebook-
buys-9-99-stake-in-reliance-jio-for-5-7-billion/articleshow/75283735.cms)

