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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.