That's not all - you also get free access to Jio's music service, movie library, streaming TV, and cloud storage.
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.
"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"
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).
$35 400 Minutes 900MB 400 SMSs
$50 600 Minutes 1200MB 600 SMSs
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://delhimetrorail.com/press_reldetails.aspx?id=aIUb8nwzH...
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/mumbai-metro...
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.
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...
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.
- Unlimited high speed data (4g)
- 500 sms per month
- 500 minutes
And you can probably get a better deal as well.
I think I pay 20€ for 3GB per month.
Yes, it's just that I don't get nearlY 60kbits when it's throttled
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.
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.
3GB/month for 15$
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.
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
I'm shedding bitter tears.
Why not? Stream at high def for a few hours and you should be done.
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.
You can get it for around $65 now https://www.zong.com.pk/internet/mobile-broadband/mbb-plans
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