Comment by varbhat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by varbhat | Hacker News Reader

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Back in 2015, costs for internet were not cheap,here in India. There were many who couldn't afford (including me).In those days(2015), I used to be on 2KBps network(You read it right, kilobytes per second). It was Idea Cellular's ₹68 2G plan(USD 0.91) where it provided 1Gigabyte of data for month. 3G plans were costlier. There was no 4G until Nov/Dec of 2015 when Airtel introduced 4G(it was hyped,but it was also costly.) There were no much 4G smartphones. Airtel wifi devices were advertised very much.

In 2016 Nov, Jio did amazing job by giving 4G data free for almost 4 months(10GB per day was limit,i guess. Also, 2G speed afterwards). It then introduced cheapest 4G 1GB/day plan for ₹400/3 months( 5.37 USD for 3 months) .Few other cellular network companies gradually went bankrupt, but others too introduced cheap plans(comparable to jio plan). This way,they revolutionized Indian internet and i am thankful to them for providing Cheap and Good internet.

But,it certainly was a curse for other ISPs(only jio,airtel(which bought few rival companies like tata docomo), and idea/Vodafone(both which got merged), state owned BSNL are remaining.

Pre-Jio in 2015 and before, I could never understand what was going on in the minds of the top management of telecom companies in India. Why couldn't they think from the point of view of a consumer? I used to wonder hadn't they heard of a Win-Win strategy where both consumers as well as business are happy. At Rs. 250 per GB per month (if you recharged only once every month) how was an average Indian consumer to watch video or play games on the internet. 1 GB quota would be used up in only one or two hour of 1080p youtube watching. It was like if someone sold you a television with cable connection and told that you can watch only for two hours a month. How demeaning and idiotic would that be? How come the top telecom players prior to jio never realized the pent-up demand for video consumption on the internet? It is still a wonder to me. It is this behaviour of the incumbents in 2015 and before that prepared the telecom field for true disruption by Reliance Jio.

Jio’s offer is really good on paper, but it’s got to be one of the slowest 4G networks I’ve used when I tried it in February. Anyone know if this is because of a lack of competition (there’s effectively one other serious player left in the Indian telco market right now), or capacity constraints?

I think the speed is highly affected by the population density. I have seen speeds varying from ~40mbps to <1mbps. The less the density the higher the speed.

Which is funny as it's much cheaper to provide higher speeds in high density areas.

How so? Wont more connections to a tower saturate the bandwidth?

Cost of provisioning the backhaul network out to the middle of nowhere maybe?.. and paying people to live next to the tower and top up the onsite diesel generator.

Can you explain the science behind this ?

I am getting 44 Mbps as i type (checked in fast.com). I am in Bangalore. It not very fast in other places i have been, but better than other networks (varies by location and almost always better than state-owned BSNL). Jio revolutionised the industry and was a boon for traveling as well. I barely ask for hotel wifi as almost always Jio connected fine even if between 4-10Mbps - it was good enough for checking emails, office work and casual surfing the internet.

The lack of competition is not enforced. The advent of 4G and the heavy investment by telcos in earlier generations of telephony has left them unable to compete financially with Jio. The nature of 4G technology means that the other telcos’ business models and borrowing structures are now simply unviable, unserviceable.

Jio 4G quality not being the best in the world is not inconceivable but it’s not part of some crackpot conspiracy involving some Chinese style oligopoly.

For a more competitive telecom market, the GoI has to do large scale debt restructuring and let go of a lot of revenue that they expect from the other competing players.

But this will also not be understood or forgiven by many of the leftists, who are a bunch of malicious hypocrites and keep weaving the story of “evil Reliance”.

> The advent of 4G and the heavy investment by telcos in earlier generations of telephony has left them unable to compete financially with Jio. The nature of 4G technology means that the other telcos’ business models and borrowing structures are now simply unviable, unserviceable.

I'm very curious about why you think this is the case, because in other countries incumbents managed the transition just fine.

Others have accused Jio of predatory pricing -- they managed to accumulate millions of subscribers by offering free services during their test period, a loophole that is now closed by the regulator[1].

[1] https://thewire.in/tech/reliance-jio-telecom-regulation-trai...

I can tell you after suffering Vodafone and Airtel that Jio is still the fastest. At least in Bangalore.

Typical Indian cities/towns are not very well planned (Chandigarh being an exception). Narrow alleyways, haphazardly shaped houses/neighbourhoods are generally the norm (especially in smaller towns). Beyond the backbone (which tends to be pretty good in general across ISPs), the main factor of speed of mobile internet, which Indians mostly use for accessing internet, is directly proportional to the reach of the cell tower to the consumer. I have seen excellent speeds in one room of a house and not so great at another room of the same house with Jio and Airtel.

Jio also tried to sue Ookla for publishing results showing Airtel to be the fastest 4G network in India. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/court-dis...

While Jio truly made cellular Internet available to 100's of millions of Indians, most post-paid (the profitable segment) customers are still with Airtel and to a lesser extent Vodafone (this one is a mystery). And Jio is again complaining to regulatory authorities that offering better plans to post-paid customers will harm all other customers (can't make this stuff up!). https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/huf1ec...

'The Ken' article, referenced in this Reddit thread, which is unfortunately behind the paywall, is very deep.

Sort of. Airtel is costlier than Jio and BSNL is worse in many areas. BSNL 3G is not only slower but doesn't have half the coverage of BSNL 2G (which is mostly used for calls and SMS not internet).

Jio is slowly increasing prices but is still cheaper than Airtel as far as I know. And the speed, while not true 4G, is better than BSNL 3G IME.

It's a function of many factors. Vodafone's reception is abysmal where I live but Jio works fine.

Interesting. I read an article that mentioned it was the fastest teleco(?) in the world.

It is possible it was a paid article. Jio's attraction is about its low price point, not quality (speed/latency). Again, that itself is not a problem per se, some people don't need the fastest and the lowest latency as long as they have affordable access.

'Fastest' growing teleco.

Is it? A few replies here are mentioning being happy with ~40 Mbps in bigger cities, meanwhile the last time I ran a speedtest in a busy CBD in Australia I got 600Mbps or so on 4G.

I sure hope you're trolling, because as an American running an AT&T 4G phone in the heart of Silicon Valley, 40 Mbps is about what I normally get on a good day.

And I assure you I pay way more than $2/ month. In fact, AT&T's cheapest unlimited plan starts around $65 - and thats the advertised price, which is always before taxes and fees, so its realistically around ~ $80 monthly once all of those ludicrous surcharges are tacked on. Once again, this is for their cheapest plan.

I haven't really seen speed tests go below 60 Mbps or so in the crowded residential building I live in!

Don't worry, the shitty and overpriced fiber we get more than offsets the quality our wireless network may have.

Yeah cause this is a developing country and what we got was a few kb/s prior to this. This is a massive leap for us

> fastest teleco(?) in the world

Previous speeds or country's development status wouldn't factor in to that question, right?

I totally agree with your reasoning. From purely consumers' point of view, Reliance Jio has been godsend for majority of Indians. One can argue that Pre-jio mobile internet in India was neither of high quality, nor as widely available and most importantly it was definitely NOT affordable. I had in my home in my small town in a backward state in 2015 - BSNL broadband which gave 512 Kbps unlimited usage broadband (or 2 Mbps limited broadband) or airtel 3g which had 2-4 mbps at Rs. 250 per GB. Much before Jio's official launch in September of 2016, I got it's 4g connection in May 1st week of that year. At that time, the condition was to buy one of their crappy 4g mobile phones (around Rs. 5500) sold by Reliance Retail to get their sim as part of beta program whose usage was truly free. The first thing after getting Jio sim I did was speedtest by Ookla - 40 Mbps! - I could'nt believe my eyes. Prior to that I was struggling to get even 4 mbps of decent speed. This beta program had no constraints - No daily limit whatsoever @ 40Mbps. During same month I was travelling by road to the state capital. In one of the remote villages, a thought came to do ookla speedtest. 25Mbps! It indeed was a beginning of a digital revolution. Not by disingenous charity (as Facebook tried to do through Free Basics) but purely by superior technology (all IP 4G network) backed by a hell lot of investment (I think 35 billion USD). When September 2016 came, and Jio was launched officially in 18000 towns and cities simulatenously. The demand was so high, that reliance jio's shops in most cities had long lines of potential customers (which previously I had only heard happens in Apple stores during launch of new products). One of the most innovative business tactics/models that Jio introducted was the per day GB plans. So technically you are getting 168 GB (2 gb per day for 84 days at Rs. 599 - today's price) but no one is gonna use uniformly throughout the month. So much of the GB's remain unused so the networks are not that congested if GBs of data usage was offered without any daily limits.

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