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Comment by hesarenu | Hacker News Reader

Jio is the only option for a huge number of Indians - I don't how the author got this impression. There are many other players Airtel,idea even bsnl. The offers are more or less similar. Anyone can switch or use both. My main number is on Airtel and i use jio as well.

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Airtel used to be the biggest player and in a few short years it has dwindled to 35% customer base of Jio. The rest of them are tiny compared to even Airtel. So sure you have options for now, but its increasingly looking like there won't be in the future.

Also the original statement that Jio is the only option for a majority of Indians is true because a lot of people only joined the mobile revolution because of Jio.

How much of Jio's dominance is just dumping? It seems unfair to cross-subsidize an industry like this. It's good for users in the short term, but if competition dwindles, it'll be bad for Indians long-term.

They built a vastly cheaper, more efficient network. That’s not dumping, just healthy competition.

Why is their network cheaper and more efficient?

Jio actually broke the dominance of Airtel in India. Its a perfectly executed strategy IMO and capitalism at work. The company bled money to undercut Airtel and other companies to gain market share and they did it really well. Now they are the market leaders. I wish something like that happened in the US. It often feels like companies collude with pricing here.

The same is happening in India where pricing of major telecom is at par with other.

It's not collusion everytime price settles in a market. Prices are obviously dependent on costs and settle based on them.

Only option and joining because of jio are two different statements. Author did not do his research or wanted to push his agenda.

The monopoly of Jio is extremely bad for India.

It's an open secret that the Ambani's have significant control over most politicians and political parties in India.

Any of the big tech companies who wish to make a significant presence in India have to go through Jio.

The monies that Facebook and Google spent buying stakes in Jio is to assure them that their operations wont be hurt.

Exactly. Many people I know, myself included see the 'investments' being routed to Jio as buying assurances from the government that regulations like data localization and other pro-privacy, anti-west measures are halted or watered down. A shakedown, in other words.

I am pretty sure they are all investing because jio will come up with a one stop digital shop with them controlling it end to end. They will be launching a cloud. All these companies are investing now to get a piece of the big pie. There will be an IPO.

> The monopoly of Jio is extremely bad for India.

Any form of monopoly is bad. However, it's important to note that prior to Jio's entry in the market, the data prices were unaffordable for majority of the population. Post Jio's entry, the same incumbent network providers had to slash their prices.

As a plebeian, the only thing I'm worried about is my internet bill. Why should I worry who Ambani has political ties with as long as I'm getting cheap bandwidth?

The usual reasons monopolies are bad. Jio in particular is known for being highhanded in blocking websites. A couple weeks ago duckduckgo was unavailable on their network across India. [0] Last week, the government of India proposed some changes to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process which would make it easier for corporations to cause ecological damage without repercussions. A couple organizations published articles condemning these changes and explained the procedure to oppose this process, their websites were promptly blocked. [1]

[0] https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1278288303532302336

[1] https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/07/14/india-reportedly-blocks...

Firstly, DDG was blocked by ALL Indian ISPs during that instance, not just Jio. People using Airtel, Vodafone, etc. were as much complaining in forums as the Jio users. From what I recall, BSNL was the only one who didn't block (due to their inefficiency perhaps!)

Secondly, with the kind of minuscule market share DDG has, they or their users can hardly get impacted by a couple hours' block. If anything, Indian govt. made them a favor by making them more famous! I for one don't recall #DDG ever trend on Twitter in recent history.

> Secondly, with the kind of minuscule market share DDG has, they or their users can hardly get impacted by a couple hours' block

I would like to know the exact market share of DDG in India.

Also people who use DDG use it as their search engine. It would impact that "minuscule" percent of people the same way the majority of people would get impacted if google.com was banned for a couple of hours.

> If anything, Indian govt. made them a favor by making them more famous

Really?

> I for one don't recall #DDG ever trend on Twitter in recent history

So it's not that minuscule market share?

> I would like to know the exact market share of DDG in India.

Its very little as I've yet to come across someone who knows it outside techie circles. Even many techies still use google because they seem to think it gives better results.

Really? So it's not that minuscule market share?

Consider the amount of time and energy the PR departments of various companies spend to get themselves trending on twitter each day? Whatever the size of their market share, it certainly increased that day because of the trending. People who've never heard about DDG started asking what it is and thus got to know about it.

> The monopoly of Jio is extremely bad for India.

Jio made Internet affordable to 100s of millions of Indians. It resulted in huge drop in data price. The results so far have been pretty good to the Indian society in general. Let's see what happens in future. Also Jio only accounts for 50% of Internet users.

> Any of the big tech companies who wish to make a significant presence in India have to go through Jio.

Okay. So? American tech companies have millions of users. It's almost impossible that one day Jio/Indian gov wakes up and decides to ban these websites. The public is not dumb. Banning Chinese Internet is not the same as banning the Internet. Unless the US decides one day to start claiming land in India or ban non US internet companies in USA. The likelihood of that happening is very very low.

> The monies that Facebook and Google spent buying stakes in Jio is to assure them that their operations wont be hurt.

Or they want to invest in a promising tech company and don't want to be left out?

Strategy is about simplifying idea in order to let the audience understand easily, and hopefully convince enough of them to act according to the implied direction in the idea.

People who actually write strategy articles, and do not practice them, mimicking that by fabricating a convincing picture, and hopefully entertain their readers.

That's why such strategy articles seldom wroth reading...

Numbers are portable, switching networks is as easy as getting a new Sim in the local market, many phones support two Sims at a time, and much of India is dense enough to support several mobile carriers - these factors keep the mobile market in India highly competitive.

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