<story><title>India&apos;s richest man offers free 4G to one billion people</title><url>http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/india-reliance-jio-4g-internet/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>veeragoni</author><text>The big thing that techies on hacker news need to realize here is what this company is trying to do by collecting all the data with so called &amp;quot;deep packet inspection&amp;quot;. they provide data at the cost of stealing all your activities on phone irrespective of app to do big data analytics. same thing that Facebook wanted to do via internet.org. It becomes easy this way. for them data is the new oil[1]!&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;in.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;reliance-telecoms-jio-idINKCN11611V&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;in.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;reliance-telecoms-jio-idINKCN1...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>India&apos;s richest man offers free 4G to one billion people</title><url>http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/india-reliance-jio-4g-internet/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>otoburb</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;[...] Indians will be able to use Jio for free until the end of 2016, and pay as little as 149 rupees ($2.25) a month for data after that.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;For additional context, Jio data rates on a $&amp;#x2F;GB basis are around one-fifth the price of competing data rates in India, and voice will evidently remain free nationwide, without roaming charges, even after the promotion period ends.[1]&lt;p&gt;This seems like a game changer, provided Jio can take enough market share and start to turn a profit on their 4G network with the subsidized smartphones and free voice calling.&lt;p&gt;Free voice calling scares Reliance&amp;#x27;s competitors because voice still constitutes over 60% of average revenue per user (example: in early 2016 voice was over 70%+ of Bharti Airtel&amp;#x27;s ARPU[2]). If Jio is successful, voice ARPU should drop like a rock for everybody else. The same will happen with Reliance too, but at least they&amp;#x27;re dictating the pace and degree of change on their own terms.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;indianexpress.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;tech-news-technology&amp;#x2F;reliance-jio-launch-free-voice-calls-cheaper-data-tariffs-announced-3007631&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;indianexpress.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;tech-news-techno...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.business-standard.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;companies&amp;#x2F;bharti-airtel-s-q3-net-profit-falls-22-116012800797_1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.business-standard.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;companies&amp;#x2F;bharti-ai...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>