[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-...

[haltingproblem]

Lets assume it was them. So they are a danger to society because they have a bad offering. Switch to another provider.

You seem to be saying there is none so they are a defacto monopoly. And they have a substandard offering so they should not be allowed to offer one.

[newyankee]

as opposed to what, no cheap internet ? As compared to which comparable country, China ? Where literally the Govt controls everything.

I appreciate the enthusiasm for privacy and all, however the priorities for Indian citizens is having a cheap, reliable internet service that becomes a backbone of the modern economy.

Now i am not defending any business practices here, however you will be hard pressed to find something as succesful anywhere else in the world which is not politicized with currying of influence and favors. That is essentially the nature of an industry which has become a utility.

People are free to educate themselves and use alternatives based on their understanding.

[intended]

Agreed - a primer for people interested in the Indian telecom story:

Indian telecom had one terrible moment which ended a near dream run for consumers.

Prior to the SC auction verdict we had a huge amount of competition.

Getting telecom market structure right is a hard thing to do, because there are always people working hard to pervert the system.

America has an auction where famously, telcos his the PIN codes for the areas they wanted in the auction bids.

This verdict ensured that many firms pulled out and significant market consolidation took place, till we went from a multitude of firms to 3 + BSNl.

At the point you have three firms, you have cartel behavior.

Then came yet another SC verdict which was devastating (arrears due to the govts was based on total profits, not just on spectrum related profits.)

This is why they were asking for help.

And finally Jio. Jio is doing a perfect job competing in its full throated style to end at least one of the debt burdened and teetering competition.

Sadly they also oppose net neutrality, and have had some amazing shenanigans ignored entirely by the regulator.

It’s not a good time for Indian telecom consumers.

[sbmthakur]

> So no solace, because it's even worse. Jio is a bigger danger than FB to us Indians..

Write for yourself. Jio has destroyed the cartel that ensured high mobile prices for a long time in the country. It's because of their efforts that millions of Indians are connected to the Internet today and could only dream about it a decade back.

[paxys]

WhatsApp payments already had regulatory approval before this deal.

[onetimemanytime]

Right, since FB cannot move itself the (likely) billion dollar bribes to Gov Official's Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India#Bribery

[rgrs]

Why it can't? Why do you think Govt is always corrupt? Why judge current govt based on corruption done in previous regimes?

[newyankee]

in fact arguably this is the first time in Indian history where i believe the people at the top are not corrupt to the extent previous Govts were (coalition politics !). The middle and low level corruption is slowly reducing as we move to more tech enabled services and transparency is a feature although it can never be eliminated, people find a way. However as the new generation in rural areas start using mobile phones with data and access services like banking online i can see a sea change. I saw farmers taking pics of their cultivations and uploading to Govt websites for availing subsidy in Karnataka. Now they had to pay 10% of the subsidy amount in cash beforehand to their local officer, but i still consider this a win and improvement. The primary reason this happened , digitization and a strong push for it.

[letmelurkaround]

This is totally true. Just lobby the biggest business instead of the government who didn’t bend for you.

[fermienrico]

For those who don't know - Mukesh Ambani is the 3rd richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $60B.

[skinnymuch]

He lost a lot of net worth in 2020. Regardless, he wasn’t 3rd richest before either. He’s 2nd richest Asian. Also just below Mackenzie Bezos.