4 ms·

> But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing. It has now reduced to 4 cents per GB for Jio Fiber. I'm sure local ISPs have reduced prices even mor

> But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing. It has now reduced to 4 cents per GB for Jio Fiber. I'm sure local ISPs have reduced prices even more just to compete with Jio (in some places you can get 3.3TB for 10$)

op03 6y ago
At that rate I am guessing the network doesn't have to deal with rain or snow or customer issues cause obviously the budget for all that is not required because how can it even exist? It's following the now classic Facebook model of pointing at scale achieved and outsourcing all the issues that scale produces to someone else namely govts, parents, teachers, the healthcare system, the police etc etc and then blaming all of those idiots for not being hip enough to handle it. After all the networking are empowering women at 4c/GB. We are nearing 20 years of this false narrative of the magic of "free" scale/magic companies with 10k employees handling a billion customers. Given all the issues that have accumulated, keep track of how many more years its going to take for the chimp brain to figure out it was never possible.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  > At that rate I am guessing the network doesn't have to deal with rain or snow What’s the connection between weather and fiber?
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    > What’s the connection between weather and fiber? Exposed cables (and there are some, at least in US—my installer had to run some last-mile cables from the nearest, uh, tower, I guess, to my house) suffer from poor weather.
    - alkonaut 6y ago
      Wow. That sounds sketchy to say the least.
    - cosmie 6y ago
      They didn't come back and bury those? I have AT&T Fiber – the installer ran a line from the nearest fiber hut to my home (across several neighbors' yards and a storm water runoff/drainage area), and left it exposed. But a separate truck rolled through about a week later and microtrenched it, so it's buried all the way up to my house.
      - JadeNB 6y ago
        They're running from a tower to my roof, so they can't be buried. (I just relay what the installer told me; I don't know anything about the details.)
        cosmie 6y ago
        Oh interesting. I was curious and found [1], which mentions aerial deployment is actually preferred when poles are available. Around me, you might see aerial to neighborhood cabinets, but everything past that (cabinet -> pedestal, pedestal -> premise) is always buried. Considering how much of a pain buried lines are around here, I had presumed that there was some value to this. But looks like it might just be a constraint imposed by local regulations. [1] https://www.ofsoptics.com/fiber-optic-solutions-for-the-home/ https://www.ofsoptics.com/fiber-optic-solutions-for-the-home...
- rohan1024 6y ago
  They maybe charging customers a penny but they offering services on top of there network and earning tons of money from it.
  - 1f60c 6y ago
    I think GP means that data is so cheap that there won't be any money to fix the cables in case they break due to an extreme weather event.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  Service issues do occur but ISPs are getting better at uptime because of the competition. A bigger issue is network saturation, especially for 4G networks. With fiber, on the other hand, some ISPs are offering upto 10-15% more than the quoted bandwidth just because there's plenty of spare capacity. Not sure if that will be the case in a few years.
- shripadk 6y ago
  > At that rate I am guessing the network doesn't have to deal with rain or snow or customer issues cause obviously the budget for all that is not required because how can it even exist? There is no such issue that ISPs are unable to solve with the infrastructure they have deployed at least for now. Keep in mind that what I am saying is anecdotal but I have a strong feeling it is the same for most Indians. In fact it was worse off earlier when they charged exorbitant rates but failed to deliver proper connectivity. Now things have improved multi-fold! Connectivity issues are now only evident when you travel to remote areas of the country. Earlier we had connectivity issues in the City/Town limits. You are forgetting that it is at a scale of multiple hundreds of millions and potentially billions of customers that these ISPs are charging cents from. Every single day. That with value added services, which they charge extra, would mean they make a fortune! Cost of labour is cheap in India. Land area being small is an added bonus as that would mean lesser cable laying work and lesser infrastructure. And since we skipped a generation of DSL/ADSL lines and jumped straight into 4G and Fiber we won't be facing much of the same issues that first World countries are facing today. Fixing network issues would be easier than say USA (you can fit 3 Indias (3.287 million square kms) in one USA (9.834 million square kms)).

op03 6y ago

At that rate I am guessing the network doesn't have to deal with rain or snow or customer issues cause obviously the budget for all that is not required because how can it even exist? It's following the now classic Facebook model of pointing at scale achieved and outsourcing all the issues that scale produces to someone else namely govts, parents, teachers, the healthcare system, the police etc etc and then blaming all of those idiots for not being hip enough to handle it. After all the networking are empowering women at 4c/GB. We are nearing 20 years of this false narrative of the magic of "free" scale/magic companies with 10k employees handling a billion customers. Given all the issues that have accumulated, keep track of how many more years its going to take for the chimp brain to figure out it was never possible.

alkonaut 6y ago
> At that rate I am guessing the network doesn't have to deal with rain or snow What’s the connection between weather and fiber?
- JadeNB 6y ago
  > What’s the connection between weather and fiber? Exposed cables (and there are some, at least in US—my installer had to run some last-mile cables from the nearest, uh, tower, I guess, to my house) suffer from poor weather.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    Wow. That sounds sketchy to say the least.
  - cosmie 6y ago
    They didn't come back and bury those? I have AT&T Fiber – the installer ran a line from the nearest fiber hut to my home (across several neighbors' yards and a storm water runoff/drainage area), and left it exposed. But a separate truck rolled through about a week later and microtrenched it, so it's buried all the way up to my house.
    - JadeNB 6y ago
      They're running from a tower to my roof, so they can't be buried. (I just relay what the installer told me; I don't know anything about the details.)
      - cosmie 6y ago
        Oh interesting. I was curious and found [1], which mentions aerial deployment is actually preferred when poles are available. Around me, you might see aerial to neighborhood cabinets, but everything past that (cabinet -> pedestal, pedestal -> premise) is always buried. Considering how much of a pain buried lines are around here, I had presumed that there was some value to this. But looks like it might just be a constraint imposed by local regulations. [1] https://www.ofsoptics.com/fiber-optic-solutions-for-the-home/ https://www.ofsoptics.com/fiber-optic-solutions-for-the-home...
rohan1024 6y ago
They maybe charging customers a penny but they offering services on top of there network and earning tons of money from it.
- 1f60c 6y ago
  I think GP means that data is so cheap that there won't be any money to fix the cables in case they break due to an extreme weather event.
blueblisters 6y ago
Service issues do occur but ISPs are getting better at uptime because of the competition. A bigger issue is network saturation, especially for 4G networks. With fiber, on the other hand, some ISPs are offering upto 10-15% more than the quoted bandwidth just because there's plenty of spare capacity. Not sure if that will be the case in a few years.
shripadk 6y ago
> At that rate I am guessing the network doesn't have to deal with rain or snow or customer issues cause obviously the budget for all that is not required because how can it even exist? There is no such issue that ISPs are unable to solve with the infrastructure they have deployed at least for now. Keep in mind that what I am saying is anecdotal but I have a strong feeling it is the same for most Indians. In fact it was worse off earlier when they charged exorbitant rates but failed to deliver proper connectivity. Now things have improved multi-fold! Connectivity issues are now only evident when you travel to remote areas of the country. Earlier we had connectivity issues in the City/Town limits. You are forgetting that it is at a scale of multiple hundreds of millions and potentially billions of customers that these ISPs are charging cents from. Every single day. That with value added services, which they charge extra, would mean they make a fortune! Cost of labour is cheap in India. Land area being small is an added bonus as that would mean lesser cable laying work and lesser infrastructure. And since we skipped a generation of DSL/ADSL lines and jumped straight into 4G and Fiber we won't be facing much of the same issues that first World countries are facing today. Fixing network issues would be easier than say USA (you can fit 3 Indias (3.287 million square kms) in one USA (9.834 million square kms)).