Till a certain extent. Netflix, Prime Videos, Hotstar etc have much more variety and higher quality and some are VERY AFFORDABLE. Prime videos and Hotstar (HBO, Game of thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley like shows) can be had for $14 USD per year EACH. So upwardly mobile Indians can subscribe to multiple OTT streaming services (I do Netflix, Hostart, Primve Video + Apple Music). For the price of one Spotify sub in US, you can subscribe to 5-7 music streaming services in India.
For the rest, Indian creators on YouTube have pretty much surpassed every big name streaming company. TVF, Timeliners etc have created content which resonates with 18-35 year olds on an emotional level. Netflix et al. will never have that emotional connect so easily.
I think T-Series would like a word.
In all seriousness I think the proliferation of independent content creators is incredible. Maybe content is of lower quality, but it's more fun.
TVF created a series set in 90s India which resonated with the current late 20s crowd so well that it spread like wildfire. If tomorrow, TVF would launch a movie, it will pretty much fill all the theaters in the country.
I would trust Wirecutter reviews more than my favorite YouTubers’ reviews, for example. The livelihoods of the reviewers is not dependent nearly as much on how well they are paid by their sponsor.
Thats mostly because of population density and sunk labor costs for building the infrastructure. Many parts of US are so sparsely populated that the densely populated regions have to subsidize some of the costs of buildding the infrastrcuture in those regions.
Canada is the worst when it comes to mobile services because they don't have cities like New York to subsidize the sparse regions. I mean the most dense metro area - Greater Toronto area has a population nf 4 million or so.
Any densely populated nation has very affordable mobile services. In my experience - UK, France, Singapore and SE Asia all have affordable mobile services.
Of course, no one can match Jio when it comes to price:feature parity. They have done what no other telecom provider in the world could do. It was and still remains one of the biggest bets in the telecom world and it wouldn't have been possible in any other country, except may be China.
Australia has a lower density and much much better plans.
SK, 6th in population density within Canada has the best rates because they have a crown-owned telecom provider SaskTel
Which providers?
>1.5GB data per data.
Guess you mean per day.
Right, have tried this one.
You’re talking about access. People don’t buy a TV to get access to content, they buy one to watch the content, whether that’s via cable, OTA, streaming services, pirating, etc. Are you saying that people in India are just fine with consuming all of their TV and movies on a tiny phone screen?
I know some people who don’t have a TV, but they would rather just not watch TV/movies at all than stream it to their phone (other than maybe during a long commute or while on the plane).
- "watching TV" to more and more people is youtube and other online video
- a lot of people in the US don't watch video on their phone because they would blow their data plan in short order. Even unlimited plans throttle in various ways when you go over a certain amount.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wifi_vs_cellular.png
Unless I am at home, I never go through the hassle of WiFi. I have unlimited data on both my phone and cellular equipped iPad.
What is the cost for the service you mentioned in India in US dollars?
One e.g. - 1.5Gb/day, 84 days, Rs 399. 1 USD =~ 70 INR, so that comes to around $6 for 3 months.
And this includes unlimited calling, and everyone uses WhatsApp for messaging.
Also, India would have better date quality if market was open to foreign players without requiring Indian stakes.
India has very high density in many areas where these kind of data rates are possible and we all would be on 1gbps connections
I think people on this thread are overstating the data quality problems. I don't live in India anymore but I still retain a Vodafone SIM card that I use when I travel back. On their 4G plan, I easily get 15Mbps, which is enough to stream full HD videos if you wanted to. 4K on the phone is not a requirement for most people as I don't know of any phones with full 4K displays in the market.
The market is actually doing very well, especially compared to North America (where I currently live).
Reliance just like any other telecom operator was laying cables which they could even lease to other private players.
But what exactly gave them enough confidence to go ahead with Jio, a deep discounted mobile network.
Jio's network infrastructure is far advanced when compared to other operations. They didn't just build it by keeping 4G in mind. It can support 5G and follow up generations without a lot of modifications. Incumbent operators had to upgrade their 2G/3G infra to support 4G. In fact, lack of 2G/3G service is a reason why Jio doesn't operate in Andaman & Nicobar islands where it's mandatory for operators to support 2G/3G service.
> But what exactly gave them enough confidence to go ahead with Jio, a deep discounted mobile network.
I would say it was access to funding and top-level infra. Not to forget, the industry was stagnant when it comes to high prices.
I included the fibre optic network because most of the other operators don't have a high capacity network like that across the country. Owning your own infrastructure allows you to undercut your opponents because you don't really have to ameliorate them to get access to their infrastructure.
That looks like an antitrust lawsuit waiting to happen. Or is Jio going to keep at it forever?
I mean, in the US, Tesla is giving away promotional battery capacity for free, which they're taking away after a few months. That sounds more egregious than anything else.
And many cable providers give discounted rates for the first few months, after which the rate goes up.
Not sure what kind of conspiracy you're thinking of. Jio is actually funded through Debt financing. Many Indian and non-Indian banks have given huge loans to Jio[1][2].
1.https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/rel...
2. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/financ...