3 ms·
Jio is really really cheap... Last year when I was in India they had an amazing launch offer where you got 3 months 4G free, with 4Gb / day (yes per day!) bandw
by frabcus 9y ago
Jio is really really cheap... Last year when I was in India they had an amazing launch offer where you got 3 months 4G free, with 4Gb / day (yes per day!) bandwidth. It worked really well, and roamed easily between states.
I'm going to guess that:
* The phone is free / really cheap, advertising subsidised. Or subsidised to cross sell other Jio services (they have a bunch).
* It doesn't have WhatsApp either because it's pushing Jio services or because it is ultra low end.
* The users have another phone with an expensive data plan. They leave it at home on wifi running WhatsApp.
Not sure though...
- martinald 9y agoYes, but if you've already got a proper phone why not use that with the SIM from Jio. Surely the whole point of JioPhone is for users that have no other phone as it is so affordable? Can't make heads or tails of this :)
- jmull 9y agoCould they be running WhatsApp, e.g., on an emulator? Then the jio phone is their only real mobile device. Maybe they’ve even found a no-cost cloud service to host the emulator?
- gsich 9y agoYou don't need an emulator. https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
- jccalhoun 9y agoIs whatsapp tied to a sim? couldn't they register for an account by borrowing someone else's phone or something?
- martinald 9y agoYes, but the phone needs to be active and switched on for whatsapp web to work and AFIAK you can only have one whatsapp account per phone unless there is some weird hack I don't know about. WhatsApp on the phone is effectively a server, and whatsapp web is a client. I can't see how their e2e encryption could work otherwise.