[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

[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.

[puranjay]

You can get a 5GB/day plan for INR 799 (~$11) per month. That's more data than most will use in a single day.

That's not all - you also get free access to Jio's music service, movie library, streaming TV, and cloud storage.

[kamaal]

>>That's more data than most will use in a single day.

Not to take away anything from your point.

But I see plenty of cab drivers watch movies, youtube and use other services like Google maps.

But there are other inspiring stories. A few months back I saw a video of street flute seller who learned to play the flute through the internet. Here is one story of a Coolie who prepared for civil services exams using internet: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/08051...

You will see plenty of stories where people are using internet to do something of value.

[dingaling]

In the UK I have do all that on a a VDSL connection capped to 120GB per month and at four times the price.

[vertex-four]

Why did you choose a capped VDSL connection, then? Unlike the US, we have real uncapped plans. As for price... go visit India and see if you can work out why people might not be able to pay as much for services, and why it might be possible to provide those services cheaper. Hint - people don’t get paid as much.

[xaranke]

That's only part of the story, India greatly benefits from population density in urban areas.

[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/. 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...

"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"

[iamgopal]

Jio already has more than 70k+ km of optical fibre layed out to connect all Major city, and more is being layed out per day. They plan to provide 100GB free per month + additional at little cost ( about 5$ per 1000GB ) with provide service such as streaming TV , security systems, landline phone at no extra cost. Installation charges up to your home for optical fibre at about 70 USD.

[TomK32]

Also living in austria, paying on €7 for my 10GB per MONTH.

[virtualwhys]

In Mexico with a Telcel pre-paid plan the max I can get is 5GB/month for 500 pesos (around $25 USD).

In India last year it was difficult as a foreigner to get Jio, so went with a couple of other providers (Airtel and Vodophone) -- not expensive at all, but coverage was dicey up in Rishikesh where I was staying.

France was the best wrt to price/data ratio, something like 20 Euros per month with Orange got me 40GB, that was really nice to have away from any big cities (Capbreton).

[sigi45]

I got more in Iran than in Germany as well but in Germany I can use it while in Iran it was flaky censored and slow.

[mmsimanga]

I am green with envy. South Africa, data is so expensive I literally only check my WhatsApp messages when using cellular networks. Everything else I do when I connect to ADSL backed WiFi connection. Here are two deals being advertised on Vodacom (vodafone), the largest cellular network in SA. Per month. (Yes it is MB not GB).

    $35 400 Minutes 900MB 400 SMSs
    $50 600 Minutes 1200MB 600 SMSs

Note: Rand has dropped from US$1 = 13 to 15 in the last day. I divided ZAR price by 14.

https://www.vodacom.co.za/vodacom/shopping/plans/plans

[tkmunzwa]

You can get an LTE data-only SIM capped to 1GB for $5/mo (ZAR 67) from Axxess[1]. Granted - it's not unlimited and doesn't include calls and SMS, but it's much better deal than Vodacom - for data.

1. https://www.axxess.co.za/mobile/data

[iamgopal]

The same Vodafone forced to change all their plan to match that to Jio. I'm using same 5$ for 2GB per day, 84 day plan that Jio provide on Vodafone.

[kamaal]

Airtel has similar plans.

Ultimately this is game of who runs out of capital first. Jio has a debt of >1,25,000 crore as of now. Airtel has plenty of cash reserves which it is burning to sustain through this.

Data is still not cheap. Its being subsidized. For how long, no one knows. Until Airtel or Jio run out of cash, or think they must stop bankrupting themselves in a price war which no one can win.

Another important thing is Mukesh Ambani has plans for e-commerce. So I guess he is playing a big game on that end too.

Consumers are benefitting though.

Bonus statistic: Jio alone is serving more data than all US networks combined.

[HeadsUpHigh]

Are you f@cking kidding me? There is literally no excuse for companies to charge us the way they do in the west at this point.

[rayiner]

Leaving aside the fact that Jio seems to be an Uber-like play and the prices aren’t sustainable, there are several other problems with your argument. In the west, the cost of building and maintaining telecom networks is dominated by labor costs. Jio is paying Indian wages to lay and splice backhaul fiber, or to fix a downed line, not US or German wages. And even in the US or Germany, this isn’t minimum wage work—it requires skilled, often unionized labor. Another big expensive for a cellular provider is tower leases. Jio is paying for leases based on Indian property prices. Jio is paying Indian wages for network operations engineers. Etc. All else being equal, the cellular equipment will cost the same, but that’s not equal either. Jio is deploying LTE a decade into its lifecycle. Western carriers deployed LTE when it came out, when equipment was far more expensive, and now are moving onto 5G. It’s clear Jio is also skimping on backhaul capacity, which is another huge expense.

Telecom infrastructure is like any other infrastructure—vastly more expensive to build in the west, and in the US in particular. New Dehli’s new subway sections were built for about $70 million per km. Typical in Europe is $200-500 million. New York spent $1.7 billion per km on its newest subway sections.

[corey_moncure]

>Jio is paying Indian wages to lay and splice backhaul fiber,

Dude. Charter Communications posted 10 billion dollars net income for 2017. They have under 100,000 employees. They could raise each of their employees' wages by $100K and still have money left over at the end of the year. It ain't the wages.

[rayiner]

There's several things wrong with that statement.

1) Charter didn't really make $10 billion in profit last year. That figure is the result of a one-time accounting change: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/charter-announces-f.... This happened to many companies last year--when the corporate tax rate was lowered, they had to re-valuate any tax assets or liabilities using the new rate: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/with-deferred-liabilities-.... That resulted in big one-time gains or losses depending on whether the company had deferred tax assets or deferred tax liabilities. Microsoft booked a $6.3 billion loss in Q2 of this year for similar reasons. That doesn't mean Microsoft is losing money hand over fist!

2) It's more useful to look at Charter's income from operations (page 31 of their 2017 annual report: http://ir.charter.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-reportsa...). That has ranged from $3 to 4 billion over the last few years on about $40 billion in revenue. That means that if Charter merely tried to break even, it could lower customer prices by about 10%.

3) Also useful is the breakdown of expenses, which starts at page 37 of the annual report. Out of $40 billion in revenues, $26 billion was spent on operating expenses. Of that, $10.6 billion is the cost of buying video programming, while the rest is maintenance, support, overhead, etc. That $15 billion-ish is dominated by labor costs. Then there is another $10 billion in depreciation, which is the annual decrease in the value of the actual network. The cost of building the network is not counted as an expense, but is instead booked as a capital asset. Each year, the accounting of income accounts for the decreasing value of that asset. That depreciation also reflects primarily labor costs (i.e. the labor costs incurred in building the asset).

4) Much of the plant maintenance and construction is handled by contractors, who wouldn't be counted in the 100,000 employees.

[kamaal]

>>All else being equal, the cellular equipment will cost the same

I'm not sure where I read this. But I remember reading several years back, Airtel doesn't buy telecom equipment, it actually leases it, and pays for it as it goes. Which is why the prices were so low even for a new tech rollout like 4G.

Not sure if Jio has the same model.

>>Telecom infrastructure is like any other infrastructure—vastly more expensive to build in the west

Apart from land acquisition costs. India doesn't buy TBMs(Tunnel Boring Machines), from what I know. TBM's are a very capital expensive investment. But pace of building things is very slow in India compared to any such project in the west.

Having said that India does do frugal engineering well.

[rohit2412]

Not sure where you got such wrong information by tunnel boring machines. They are widely used and are cheap (don't believe 1 billion$ per mile some businessman sells you). Both Delhi and Mumbai have used tunnel boring machines. Indian metro cost 30-100 million dollars per mile based on property prices, number of stations, and ratio of underground/overground. Don't know the breakdown, but have read that the major costs are stations. Tbm themselves are expendable. That is why Delhi and Mumbai ordered 19 and 17 tbm for a single phase and a single line.

http://delhimetrorail.com/press_reldetails.aspx?id=aIUb8nwzH...

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/mumbai-metro...

[kamaal]

>>Not sure where you got such wrong information by tunnel boring machines.

I'm not saying they don't use it. I'm saying they don't buy it. They lease it. Bangalore Metro's snail pace is largely due to inability to afford renting more TBM's.

TBM's are not cheap. Not for the budget projects like Bangalore(and other cities get) metro gets. Delhi and Mumbai are a different deal, as government spends money through a fire hose there. In fact South India pays most of the taxes and gets little in return, compared to North, which gets >1 rupee for every rupee it contributes to the exchequer.

South Indian cities are not that lucky.

One of the feedbacks that went into further phases for Bangalore Metro was to get more TBMs. They only used like 4 for the first phase, and even there one broke down and it took like months to get it fixed.

[cstejerean]

Airtel did used to buy equipment indirectly, by paying dollars per capacity (erlang model) and letting the vendor figure out what that involved regarding equipment. But they moved away from this a few years ago to a more traditional model of just buying equipment, along with making some other major changes to the way they buy IT services as well.

I used to do some work at Airtel but I cross checked what I posted here against publicly available information, for example from https://www.zdnet.com/article/airtel-chops-ibm-contract-in-h...

[HeadsUpHigh]

Labor costs sound like a weak excuse. Sure I don't expect the same price, but with 1.5gb/day( which realistically speaking is the only thing that matters) I'm paying 180 times more per gb of data.

[jeffbax]

Until you realize what labor costs are (or deployment density is) in the West compared to those countries?

Also, price is a function of what the return value and need to have capital to invest with, not just the minimum cost to operate once things are set in place.

[kayuri]

In Russia for ~$7:

- Unlimited high speed data (4g)

- 500 sms per month

- 500 minutes

And you can probably get a better deal as well.

[k__]

We don't uave unlimited mobile data in Germany.

I think I pay 20€ for 3GB per month.

[lexs]

That sounds like you have a O2 Boost contract which is theoretically "unlimited" you just get throttled to ~60kbits after the cap

[k__]

I have Fyve.

Yes, it's just that I don't get nearlY 60kbits when it's throttled

[westpfelia]

Doesnt aldi sell unlimited sims for like 13 euro? I've lived in Hamburg now for 7 months but still use Google Fi since its also very cheap and has yet to not work in any country I go to. But I always thought you could get something SUPER cheap in Aldi.

[k__]

They have a starter set for 13€ that includes sim card and 10€ credit.

They also have an XL flat rate which includes 5,5GB LTE that costs 15€/month. So you pay like 18€ in the first month and then 15€ in the following months.

This isn't bad, but I don't get O² net where I live, so I can only use Vodafone based offerings.

[TwiNNatioN]

For 80$ per month in Canada: - Unlimited call + texts - 6GB per month

And this is considered a good deal

[akfanta]

> And this is considered a good deal

No it's not. There are tons of cheaper plans out there from cheaper carriers like Public Mobile/Koodo/Fido and etc. You just have to look up for them. I used to pay 40 for 4GB/month and now I am at 12GB/month for 55. Still not cheap, but not as bad as what you are saying.

[xfer]

I used to live near vancouver area, Fido/Koodo don't have good coverage, my university in Burnaby had 0 coverage for these networks.

[colmvp]

Practically every product/service I can think of is more expensive here than other countries, namely the U.S. Yet the wages aren't exactly higher than other developed countries like the U.S. I don't really get it.

[krisroadruck]

fewer people is probably the issue, fewer people to spread the cost of R&D or infrastructure onto = higher cost per person. Just a guess though.

[sattoshi]

I found tablet data plans as the only worth while option.

3GB/month for 15$

[mundu_wa_hinya]

In Kenya on Airtel, I pay $10 per month for 6gb data, 400 minutes and 2000 SMS. The unused balance gets rolled over into the next month. Oh, and there are no tethering limits. For home use, I pay $50 for unlimited 25mbit fibre to the home

[onetimemanytime]

Great but let's see how the pricing holds...he's well funded to keep killing the competition for quite a while. Then, you'll see his real intentions

[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.

[throwawayperson]

I heard the service is cheap but quality is bad?

[iamgopal]

They forced all provider to match the price. That is the real benefit for someone who didn't wanted to change.

[baybal2]

100$ for 200GB 4g plan on China Mobile Pakistan

[kamaal]

Whoa! That's expensive.

One of the reason for India's economic success in the digital age is awesome and affordable telecommunications infrastructure.

You can't run a good start up ecosystem, or even a decent economic ecosystem without these things these days.

[baybal2]

Jio is cheaper per Gigabyte, but they wouldn't let you spend all your quota in a day. That's the trick

[rohit2412]

But jio is also cheaper by a factor of 10-20. It is unbelievable pricing, they cannot be subsidizing it by 90%, and they probably don't have 90% margin initially, after including infrastructure costs.

[baybal2]

Factor of 10???

China mobile Pakistan - 200 Gb package for $65

Jio - ~30 gb for $6 a month, you can't humanly consume exactly 1.5 Gb per day.

200 : 65 = ~3.1

30 : 6 = ~5

Best case scenario, 45 : 6 = 7.5

So it is twice as cheap, but not by a factor of 10

[evozer]

OP said $5 for 84 days though, not a month.

[tushar-r]

>you can't humanly consume exactly 1.5 Gb per day.

Why not? Stream at high def for a few hours and you should be done.

[kamaal]

They don't have to :)

Seriously, you need to watch like a HD movie everyday to exhaust that kind of quota. Unless you are flush with money and entirely jobless, you won't exactly be spending hours of your time everyday doing this.

But cheap plans let you use things like Google Maps, Collaborate over WhatsApp, Send recieve/picture videos etc. That kind of stuff is important for productivity for an economy. Especially for everyday business people this works wonders.

[baybal2]

Update, the price went down recently.

You can get it for around $65 now https://www.zong.com.pk/internet/mobile-broadband/mbb-plans

[throwawayperson]

Not long ago they are selling $1.5 for 100MB in China.

[baybal2]

China Mobile Pakistan != China Mobile from PRC