1. Reliance Jio may not be pleased with govt's spectrum moratorium to telcos: https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance-ji...
2. India Trying to Stop Reliance From Selling Assets, Times Says: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to-stop...
As to your second link (Dec 23, 2019), yes, the Govt. did try to stop the 20% sale to Aramco, but "Aramco officials and bankers on the deal have been working at Reliance’s offices in Mumbai" says otherwise: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance-...
Regarding the on-going talks of selling asset, since court has already ordered Reliance to reveal assets, they just can't do away with whatever is the liability set. Indian court system is not a joke.
My original point was that Reliance or Mukesh do not rule India; yes they are clever and do lobbying as any other capitalist does but they don't control the nation or gov.
https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/government-helping-reli...
It's the Vodafone group CEO that's accusing TRAI of favoring Jio. They had a free run charging exorbitant data prices for a good time. No wonder these accusations are coming from Vodafone.
> Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields
This was fought in courts and eventually an international tribunal favored Jio.
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/govt-moves-delhi-h...
https://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/big-victory-f...
> They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it..
What does this even mean? Even PayTm issued full page ads with Modi's image. Are they running the government too?
Jio has had some eye opening advantages-
Jio abused the stress test period for their network and essentially launched their service for free saying “join Jio, next few months free! (Fine print, this is technically a stress test.)
The way the auction for spectrum was conducted was magical- they had a front company With impressive bureaucracy wrangling power.
The stench of malfeasance is strong here.
That said fundamentally this is an issue that relates to the death of competition in the market.
Since the bungled SC auction verdict destroyed a vibrant telecom market, we’ve dropped to a triopoly- and heading fast to a duopoly.
What is sad is that the previous governments had done a truly impressive job of threading the economic needle when it came to designing a telecom market with competition.
Indian telecom was a boon to its impoverished customer base. Now it’s becoming a cabal.
I beg to differ. I do understand Jio was quite aggressive in expanding its services and TRAI should have been more vigilant. But that still doesn't prove that they were working together in order to establish a monopoly. The pre-Jio telecom market was good for the telecom companies but it was horrible for the end consumers. The data prices were simply too high.
The reason why I say this is because it’s VERY easy for the market structure to get flubbed and become only 2 or 3 firms which “compete”. (See america- invented the Internet, didn’t get the market right.)
India has some of the lowest, if not the lowest ARPUs in the world. The Indian telecom sector invented the 0 cost phone call (you give a missed call to a phone number, people call you back with offers)
Market structure is so important - you see it how the nascent Value added services market was destroyed by Indian telcos.
Back in the day one new area of innovation was VAS- but telcos were able to dictate the profit spread to VAS firms once they realized VAS was profitable. This killed the industry.
Telecoms tend towards rent seeking behavior (American telecoms say “this is the best service we can provide”, until google fibre turns up and magically those fibre installations get executed)
Data prices being high ignores the cost of calls and of infra issues the telcos were facing.
The spectrum auctions and the subsequent Supreme Court verdict destroyed our market - and there just isn’t the kind of market and economic acumen+Political power mix which will fix the market.
Maybe yes. But my previous point stands. What good is the sector when millions of Indians can't afford it? (from the perspective of data rates). Also the incumbents had all the time in the world to normalize data rates. But instead they chose to cartelize the industry and kept their profits up.
https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/03/05/the-co...
So they didn't cartelize, and only recently after the insane noise over the 3g auction which fizzled out, did we lose that market.
We've now essentially cartelized (all remaining firms raised rates in tandem), and the few players left are also teetering with Vodafone considering leaving.
This means that we will likely see Jio, and Airtel left, with BSNL constantly being denuded.
Their profits are terrible, and the debt burden because of arrears means they need a rescue, or the future situation will become - impressively - even worse.
The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio: https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone-gro...
Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields: https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas-shift...
They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it: https://thewire.in/economy/modi-reliance-jio-advertisement