When the erstwhile Reliance Infocomm launched its landmark service in December 2002 with the catchline ‘Kar lo duniya mutthi mein (The world in your fist)’, many called it a revolution in the Indian telecom sector. For the first time, mobile telephony had been made affordable, unleashing its potential to connect Indians irrespective of where they lived or worked. Fourteen years later, when the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio launched its 4G service with VoLTE (voice over long-term evolution) technology in September 2016, the focus was on data, with high-speed video downloads and live-streaming of news, sports and entertainment becoming the new normal. But Jio’s entry also shook up the giant incumbents—Vodafone, Idea and Bharti Airtel—and uprooted Reliance Communications (what Reliance Infocomm came to be known as, and ironically, belonging to Mukesh’s brother Anil), which, saddled with gargantuan debt and obsolete CDMA technology, was easy game. With its rivals in the doldrums, Jio does indeed have the Indian telecom sector in its grip—but this has also raised serious questions for consumers. How will customers fare in a monopolistic or a duopolistic situation, with just one or two telecom players? Will they be vulnerable to serial price hikes? Is this the end of low tariffs, which have been mostly responsible for the large-scale use of value-added services such as data?
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 16, 2019-Ausgabe von India Today.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 16, 2019-Ausgabe von India Today.
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A new exhibition at Gallery XXL, Mumbai juxtaposes the artworks of an Indian and a Spanish artist
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FLAGRANT VIOLATIONS
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THWARTED FRANCHISE
Robertsganj, on the southeastern tip of Uttar Pradesh, is a study in how a coalition of other castes often defeats the aspirations of the majority caste among Dalits-in constituencies reserved for the Scheduled Castes
THE LAST FRONTIER
PURVANCHAL HOSTS THE BIGGEST STAR CANDIDATE IN INDIA: NARENDRA MODI IN VARANASI. THAT MAY BE A NO-CONTEST, BUT CRAFTY CASTE PLAY BY THE SP-CONGRESS POSES A CHALLENGE IN THE OTHER DOZEN SEATS
THE FIGHT FOR POLITICAL CAPITAL
Leading the campaign as non-playing captains or taking the electoral field themselves, a whole range of political players exemplify the churn that Punjab's politics is going through