India Is Catching Up Fast!

Posted: 9/6/2018

Just read this amazing story: Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet—One Billionaire Changed All That Mukesh Ambani’s national 4G network for Reliance Jio, which charges pennies for data, is bringing hundreds of millions online for the first time (hope it will not be behind a paywall; I was able to read whole story, but not a 2nd time)

India is catching up fast! Great story! Great entrepreneur! All this at a truly breathtaking speed! An economic miracle! Two thumbs up!

Some salient quotes from the article (emphasis added; risking copyright issues):

1. “India’s richest man is catapulting hundreds of millions of poor people straight into the mobile internet age.”
   [This is not an exaggeration]
2. “Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, ... one of India’s largest conglomerates, has shelled out $35 billion of the company’s money to blanket the South Asian nation with its first all-4G network”
3. “Jio, which means “to live” in Hindi, has signed up 215 million subscribers since it went live in 2016, making it India’s No. 4 mobile provider, after Bharti Airtel Ltd. , with 345 million, Vodafone Group PLC and Idea Cellular Ltd.”
   [Competition is good!]
4. “Some rivals began rolling out 4G services in some cities, but Mr. Ambani wanted to build a network that would also cover more than 18,000 cities and towns and 200,000 villages, touching some places that didn’t have electricity yet. That required more than 200,000 cell towers and 150,000 miles of high-tech fiber-optic cable, ...”
5. “At the launch of service in September 2016, Jio made phone calls and text messages free for subscribers, and made unlimited data free for the first three months, eventually extending it to six months. After that, Jio’s data price would be a quarter the industry average.”
6. “Jio transmitted more data in the first year of its operation than any carrier ever world-wide, … . India last year surpassed the U.S. in the number of apps downloaded from the Google Play store, …. Monthly data traffic in India per user has jumped 570% in the two years since Jio launched ...”
7. “On a recent day at Jio’s sprawling tree-lined headquarters on the outskirts of Mumbai, its young staff of more than 25,000 … In one men’s bathroom, a sign on the mirror said, “You are looking at an innovator!””
   [What does the mirror in the ladies restroom say? Perhaps, you are looking at an entrepreneur?]