[HN Gopher] In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving wome...
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In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice
Author : _wldu
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-01-05 11:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| x3c wrote:
| More than the statistics, it's the stories that open your
| imagination to the unlock connectivity is bringing. Using
| WhatsApp to report timber theft is something I would never have
| guessed.
| nexuist wrote:
| This is something I found amazing about WeChat as well. You can
| schedule appointments with barbers, doctors, physicians, etc
| all through custom interfaces implemented by 3rd party vendors
| within the app. It's kind of like its own operating system. And
| for all of the needs that aren't already covered, you can
| always resort to basic text messaging (again through WeChat).
| This probably covers 100% of business communications: customers
| talking to vendors, vendors talking to customers, and vendors
| talking to other vendors. The only thing missing as far as I
| know is a way to communicate with government entities to e.g.
| file paperwork and such. But I'm sure that will come in time.
| soupson wrote:
| As of 2017, you can file court documents using WeChat.
|
| https://www.scmp.com/tech/china-
| tech/article/2125804/tencent...
| RIMR wrote:
| Personally, using a communications network like WhatsApp to
| communicate things to each other is maybe the first use case I
| would have guessed.
| x3c wrote:
| More than the abstract notion of it being a communication
| platform, it's the specific usecases that open your
| imagination to the unlocks connectivity is bringing. Using
| WhatsApp to report timber theft is something I would never
| have guessed.
|
| I thought you'd have guessed the spirit of the comment since
| you're so adept at guessing.
| finphil wrote:
| Great read ^.^
| blueblisters wrote:
| India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's
| 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress
| will probably come from creating safe, well-paying jobs.
| r00fus wrote:
| It's more than that. I know many women who quit their well-
| paying jobs because societally in the US we have not fully
| socialized child rearing in a way that China has.
|
| e.g.: Our infrastructure and attitudes about kids transport is
| in dire need of refactoring.
| mbg721 wrote:
| That's not necessarily a bad thing. What about women who
| prefer to see their kids grow up rather than endlessly chase
| paychecks?
| r00fus wrote:
| I think we agree; labor participation rate for women may
| not be a good single-dimensional indicator of societal
| progress.
| [deleted]
| officeplant wrote:
| What about dads who would like to do the same?
| mbg721 wrote:
| Plenty of families would benefit from dividing labor that
| way; the biggest (non-artificial) obstacle is probably
| the inertia from the realities of giving birth and
| breastfeeding.
| iguy wrote:
| Seems unlikely this 20% number implies that 80% of women are
| sitting at home drinking tea & looking after kids.
|
| Where is it from? Is this formal sector employment?
|
| IIRC the informal labor market is something like 80% of the
| country in total. Lots of people work in ways that are
| difficult to gather statistics about.
| volgo wrote:
| If you've visited India, you wouldn't be surprised. Most
| women do stay home and take care of kids
|
| And it's really hard work btw, cooking and looking after the
| house and kids. They're definitely not just "sitting home and
| drinking tea."
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but it's a serious waste of their abilities as
| humans. It's no surprise that dual-professional households
| there who hire specialists for the cooking and looking
| after the house parts have better lives (as judged by the
| fact that few women who are professionals will want to
| become housewives while the opposite is a common desire).
| dudul wrote:
| How is taking care of their children a serious waste of
| their abilities as humans?
|
| When you look at all the BS jobs around, spending your
| time taking care of your family sounds much more
| productive and rewarding to me.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Because there are rapid diminishing returns with every
| extra hour past the first few. My parents put a lot of
| work into me, but they were also full-time surgeons. My
| mum most definitely put a hell of a lot of work into me
| but she didn't spend all the time at home.
|
| Worked out pretty well.
|
| Of course you want to allow for people to do whatever
| they want, but part of that is enabling them to not have
| to be stay-at-home parents. And most people want to do
| something more than that, in practice, because creating
| things is a fundamental human need that most people have.
| If people want to be stay-at-home parents and they can do
| it, more power to them, but it's important to allow them
| to make that choice otherwise unconstrainedly and not
| through societal pressure to keep women at home because
| jobs are unsafe (there are whole categories of work one
| avoids at the margin in India if one is a woman, because
| you cannot guarantee safe transport from/to one's place
| of work).
| citrablue wrote:
| One example from your own experience is not
| generalizable.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It isn't meant to be. It's meant to be an existence proof
| to allow people the freedom to work.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Women have the freedom to work in India...
| dudul wrote:
| > I turned out to be pretty damned awesome.
|
| I'm not gonna waste time arguing with someone who writes
| something like that.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Don't be like that. It's just a bit of humour. But fine,
| I took it out. Anyway, it's not important enough to argue
| so this is an okay outcome.
| iguy wrote:
| Yes I exaggerate slightly. But I wonder a lot about the
| quality of this data. Doesn't about half the country still
| work on farms? Low-tech farming has endless labor for all
| kinds of hands, but little paperwork.
| asenna wrote:
| I'm from an upper middle-class family in India and the
| data from all my relatives (including distant ones)
| matches this - 80% does seem about right for housewives.
| Similar for my friends.
|
| It's changing rapidly with the newer generation but for
| my parents' generation that is definitely the norm.
| bloodorange wrote:
| It's not exaggeration. It's disrespectful and taking
| their effort for granted.
| iguy wrote:
| To be clear, I mentioned this stereotype specifically to
| claim this is _not_ what 's happening.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| 80% of women are doing tasks at home which technically
| doesn't count as employment, but which as just as (if not
| more) important to overall productivity of a nation.
|
| Workers are more productive when they're happier, that's why
| we have 40-hour workdays, weekends off, trying out the 4 day
| week, etc. When workers' kids are cared for well, when they
| have good food at home, when they have a robust social life
| (women often connect their families to others while men are
| away at work), then they are more productive.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Isn't any labor statistic from India suspect because so many
| people work in the "shadow economy"?
| managerclass wrote:
| TIL China has a higher female labor participation rate than the
| US. Unexpected.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| The real murky question is if that's desirable.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| Why unexpected? The Soviet Union did too. A few reasons for
| that (for the Soviet Union; I know less about China):
|
| 1) One of the premises of communism is equality of all
| people, including equality of men and women. As a result, a
| bunch of official barriers to women's labor force
| participation that existed in the US up until recently were
| removed quite a bit earlier in communist countries. Not only
| that, but the right to a job was considered a basic human
| right in the Soviet constitution, and not having a job was a
| crime punishable by jail time starting in the early 60s (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense)#So.
| .. for some basic details). Note that this did not
| necessarily affect societal attitudes about household labor,
| by the way: women were just expected to both work _and_ do
| the cleaning/washing/cooking at home...
|
| 2) Female employment in the US surged during WWII to make up
| for all the men drafted into the military, then dropped as
| the size of the military was reduced in the aftermath.
| Something similar happened in the Soviet Union with women
| stepping into "men's jobs", but without as much of a
| corresponding drop after the war. Something to do with the
| fact that US deaths in WWII (combat and non-combat) were
| ~400k, which was about .6% of the male population in 1941, on
| the assumption that most of those deaths were males and males
| were half the total population. For the Soviet Union
| estimates for military deaths (mostly male) in WWII vary from
| ~8 million to ~14 million (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| World_War_II_casualties_of_the... ), which corresponds to
| 4-7% of the 1941 total population. 8-14% of the male
| population if the pre-war breakdown between male and female
| was 50-50, which may or may not have been the case. Plus
| whatever the breakdown was among the ~10-15 million
| nonmilitary deaths in WWII in the USSR... But the upshot was
| that there were a lot more women alive than men after the
| war, which reduced he "men coming home and taking back their
| jobs" effect, because the men just did not come home.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Seems related to the famous paradox that women in 'freer'
| countries choose _more_ gender-specific jobs. I think there's
| a natural explanation that relates to Maslow's Pyramid but
| anyway, just wanted to mention that if you haven't heard it.
| trianglem wrote:
| That's because you are not counting housekeeping and child
| rearing as essential labor which is inaccurate.
| volgo wrote:
| Labor participation would be 99% in all countries. What's
| your point?
|
| The 20% to 60% is meant to demonstrate female inequality in
| India, because most of them are working at home for zero pay
| and low social status. Whereas in more developed countries,
| women get paid to work in industries.
| svieira wrote:
| So it's better to be payed to care for someone else's
| children than to not be payed to care for your own?
|
| I think the point the parent is trying to make is that
| saying that "participation of women in the workplace" isn't
| a directly-correlated metric for the "how happy / empowered
| / established / productive are women in this society"
| metric that we all care about improving.
| qsort wrote:
| Is there any particular reason why you are assuming that
| housekeeping and child rearing should be the exclusive
| responsibility of women?
|
| I'm struggling to see any honest point in this comment.
| trianglem wrote:
| I said saying only 20% of women are involved in labor in
| India is incorrect. That number is much much higher if you
| take those into account.
| volgo wrote:
| You're wrong. Every country would have 99% labor
| participation rate if you count those. It's not
| meaningful
|
| The fact is only 20% of women are not getting paid for
| their labor. It's a sign of huge lack of development
| progress
| managerclass wrote:
| The statistic is saying that 20% of women in India
| participate in the workforce as it is defined.
|
| Are you trying to say that the 60% of Chinese women
| includes women who are homemakers and aren't in the
| workforce as it is defined?
| foggyeyes69 wrote:
| I think OP was making a statement about how things are
| rather than how they should be.
|
| I agree with you that this shouldn't be the case, but right
| now it absolutely is the case in India.
| oblio wrote:
| OP's comment doesn't add anything of value in that case.
| In 99% of cultures out there, traditional roles imply
| that the women is a homemaker.
|
| Nobody reasonable assumes that women not counted in labor
| participation statistics are partying on the moon :-)
|
| I.e.: we already knew what he's saying.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| People like to make a contrarian point on here that technology
| doesn't solve cultural or political problems but as you can see,
| it often does.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| That's an exciting read and it's hard to grasp the sheer numbers
| involved here, no wonder bandwidth is troublesome at these
| scales.
|
| Feels like this could eventually start a liberating movement for
| women across the country.
| varvar wrote:
| Liberating women from what exactly?
|
| It all seems ridiculous myth making, considering what indians
| have shared here on HN about how much asymmetrical power indian
| women have available through the court system in India, and the
| sort of abuses they inflict regularly, the misuse of the
| assymetry for material gain etc.
|
| But yeah I get it. It's the new Democracy + Capitalism freedom
| making program they NEED to go through for their own good.
| pascalmahe wrote:
| > Liberating women from what exactly?
|
| Take your pick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_agains
| t_women_in_Indi...
| croissants wrote:
| Restricting to people age 25+, Indian men average 8.7 years
| of education, and Indian women average 5.4 [1]. Add in the
| sclerotic nature of Indian courts, and unless I'm really
| misreading this data, it's hard for me to imagine that Indian
| women averaging an elementary school education are en masse
| closing this gap through legal maneuvers.
|
| Maybe you're referring to a specific subgroup of women?
|
| [1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/IND
| Guthur wrote:
| Don't worry, no one is ever that interested in men being happy
| anyway.
| pascalmahe wrote:
| That's because men are not victims of a system tailored to
| others' needs. Women are:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_India
| Guthur wrote:
| And so your point is their happiness doesn't matter?
|
| I can guarantee you there are many unhappy men that does
| see this so called advantage.
| llampx wrote:
| Seems a bit of a leap to suggest that only men are interested
| in controlling women.
| pascalmahe wrote:
| Parent said nothing about only men being interested in
| controlling women. On the contrary, liberation of women can
| be liberation from mothers, mother in-laws, grandmothers...
| sharadov wrote:
| Speech detection is just amazing when you think about illiterate
| folk, it's a game changer for them. Jio's genius was offering
| free data plans for a year, getting folks hooked. But the fact
| that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing.
| shripadk wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rohan1024 wrote:
| They maybe charging customers a penny but they offering
| services on top of there network and earning tons of money
| from it.
| 1f60c wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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)).
| alkonaut wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| cosmie wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| alkonaut wrote:
| Wow. That sounds sketchy to say the least.
| tchalla wrote:
| > But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing.
|
| 9cents in India would be equivalent to 1.91 USD after taking
| into account Purchasing Power Parity (OECD 2019). Therefore,
| you are in effect saying 1.91 USD per GB is amazing. You can
| not compare values without including purchasing power
| disparities.
| RIMR wrote:
| PPP should not have this kind of effect over a renewable
| globalized asset like data.
| iguy wrote:
| It's messy right? I mean you aren't buying global data, you
| are buying data delivered in a particular town. Some of the
| costs of providing it are all about the location (e.g.
| renting land to put up towers) and some aren't at all (e.g.
| the networking hardware), so it still seems very impressive
| that they can do it this cheaply.
| tchalla wrote:
| You can not simply compare a good in two different
| currencies without normalisation for disposable income,
| value and purchasing power. The value of 100$ in India is
| different than in the US. So obviously, some things in
| India will be cheap in $$$. You have to normalise on some
| metric. I chose PPP which is not perfect. If you do not
| like it, you can choose another reasonable one.
| jagmal wrote:
| I believe it would be ~9 * 3.5(i.e. fx_rate/ppp)= ~31.5 cents
| and not 1.91 USD.
| iamgopal wrote:
| Only thing no one in the world can beat Indians at, is at
| calculating money cost and profits.
| prudhvis wrote:
| Growing up in poverty and seeing it all around you will
| do that to people. It's not a special thing that Indians
| only possess.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'd take $1.91 per GB for phones. I don't use that much
| mobile data so it's not a big deal but it's $10/GB for me on
| Tracfone.
| sharadov wrote:
| PPP makes no sense, I know economists use it all the time,
| but some goods are expensive and some are not across
| countries - food is cheap in India, there are massive
| subsidies around it. Anything imported is expensive - cars,
| electronics, foreign liquor. It's cheap and it's continuing
| to drop. And it's in no way $1.91 from an Indian perspective.
| [deleted]
| shripadk wrote:
| PPP makes no sense when it comes to comparing data usage
| between countries. Data is not based on same supply/demand
| characteristics as physical goods. It is quite literally
| arbitrary. Much like most software you buy/subscribe to. Ever
| bought a digital product at 90% discount during Black Friday
| or Cyber Monday? Why don't you find physical products with
| 90% discounts (unless it is a clearance sale)? Because you
| can't discount cost involved in acquiring raw materials and
| labour cost. Digital products on the other hand can be
| duplicated infinite times with zero additional cost. So is
| anything connected to it (which includes data, storage and
| processing). Sure there is some cost involved. But at scale
| that cost becomes negligible. You can't produce physical
| products at scale without the cost also scaling
| proportionally.
|
| Even in India, before Jio made its entry, data was extremely
| expensive. Horrible speeds, very low data limits and no
| competitive pricing (you can say that it was a data cartel of
| sorts). Jio disrupted the entire sector. All ISPs reduced
| prices overnight. How could they do it? Wouldn't it hit their
| bottom line? Nope! They never went into loss in the first
| place. They charged exorbitant rates because they could. Not
| because there was some basis for it. That monopoly was
| disrupted. That is all there is to it.
|
| And with a billion+ people in the country, ISPs will never go
| under loss for selling data for few cents - a dollar. Rather,
| they are probably making more than they ever did. Jio showed
| them the way to price correctly.
| tchalla wrote:
| > PPP makes no sense when it comes to comparing data usage
| between countries.
|
| We are not comparing data usage, we are comparing the value
| of two different currencies. The value of 100 US$ in India
| is different from that in the US or the EU. In order to
| normalise the value between two currencies, PPP is used. It
| doesn't matter what the 100US$ is spent on, data or food.
| shripadk wrote:
| > We are not comparing data usage, we are comparing the
| value of two different currencies. The value of 100 US$
| in India is different from that in the US or the EU. In
| order to normalise the value between two currencies, PPP
| is used. It doesn't matter what the 100US$ is spent on,
| data or food.
|
| But you are comparing value of currencies by comparing
| two equal goods. That would mean also comparing
| acquisition of raw materials, labour costs, import/export
| of goods, availability of resources etc which is never
| going to be the same. PPP itself has shortcomings (you
| can read them here:
| https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/international-
| trade/15-cr...).
|
| For example, India might have abundance of rice while USA
| might have shortage of rice. But rice is used for making
| noodles in both countries and demand for rice is
| equivalent in both countries. Would you price it
| according to PPP index? Nope. You take into account any
| tariffs imposed by host country. What about transport?
| What about labour costs? There are so many variables that
| can influence the pricing of a product. PPP is a bad way
| to judge cost of living and cost of goods/services.
|
| If PPP is 21.3 (2019 data) between USA and India, a
| Harley Davidson in India should be 21.3 times cheaper
| than a Harley Davidson in USA. It isn't. The cost is
| pretty much the same. So is the case with iPhones. Even
| if iPhones are manufactured in India it would still cost
| slightly less than in USA. It will never be 21.3 times
| cheaper.
|
| Also, let us take Big Mac Index into account. It was a
| humorous take on PPP devised by economists to compare the
| costs of a Big Mac between countries (as McDonalds
| maintained standards between countries). Now the cost of
| a Big Mac in India and a Big Mac in US might not reflect
| the true PPP of the country because it all depends on the
| appetite of Indians for a Big Mac. We are avid consumers
| of street food. Street food for us is what is McDonalds
| for Americans. Now how can you make McDonalds as a
| standard for the World when in my part of the World a
| tiny percentage of the population visits McDonalds to
| consume their delicious burgers while a large percentage
| eats street food? Wouldn't that obviously influence the
| price of a McDonalds burger in India as the demand for it
| is next to non-existent? Now let me reverse the case and
| say that India tomorrow undergoes a massive cultural
| change and everyone shifts from eating street food to
| eating at a McDonalds burger joint. What would the price
| of a Big Mac in India be then? Obviously with high demand
| the cost falls rapidly. PPP should blow up right? But
| does that truly reflect the standard of living between
| two countries? That is a food for thought for you.
| tchalla wrote:
| > If PPP is 21.3 (2019 data) between USA and India, a
| Harley Davidson in India should be 21.3 times cheaper
| than a Harley Davidson in USA. It isn't. The cost is
| pretty much the same. So is the case with iPhones. Even
| if iPhones are manufactured in India it would still cost
| slightly less than in USA. It will never be 21.3 times
| cheaper.
|
| PPP does not mean that Harley Davidson in India would be
| 21.3 times cheaper. It means that the value of Harley
| Davidson in India in US$ would be equivalent in the US
| when the price is 21.3x
|
| If you do not like PPP, you can use another metric to
| normalise prices. But, you can not simply compare two
| goods in two different currencies by taking an exchange
| rate. You need a normalisation factor. Every metric has
| its shortcoming - pick one but don't compare absolutes.
| shripadk wrote:
| > It means that the value of Harley Davidson in India in
| US$ would be equivalent in the US when the price is 21.3x
|
| You lost me here. Can you elaborate on this more please?
| When it came to data comparisons you literally did
| multiply 21.3 with 9 cents and arrived at the value of
| 1.91$ per GB. So how is your comparing data costs using
| PPP as a normalizing factor fine but not fine when it
| comes to me comparing cost of manufacturing an iPhone or
| a Harley Davidson in both countries? Your argument isn't
| consistent. How can you ignore exchange rate and only
| look at PPP and decide the cost of living? It just
| doesn't make sense to me. Sure PPP gives a rough idea
| about where countries stand relative to the US when it
| comes to purchasing power parity but, more often than
| not, it is too far off from ground reality.
| tchalla wrote:
| Let me once again repeat what I have said and please take
| some time to listen and understand it
|
| * You can not compare goods across two countries by
| simply taking the exchange rate, you need to normalise to
| account for different factors like disposable income
|
| * I took PPP as the normalisation metric. It is not
| perfect but is meant for this purpose.
|
| * If you are not happy with PPP as a normalisation
| metric, you can choose another one as defined by
| economists. If you want to come up with your own, you are
| also free to take another metric and agree with
| economists to use them. The metrics you have suggested
| are already considered in the PPP calculations. Look into
| them
|
| Key Point : You can NOT compare good(s) across two
| different countries/currencies in absolute values.
| shripadk wrote:
| > * You can not compare goods across two countries by
| simply taking the exchange rate, you need to normalise to
| account for different factors like disposable income
|
| This is where you are wrong. You have to take exchange
| rate when calculating PPP. Which is what I have been
| trying to explain to you. You are completely skipping
| exchange rate, which is why you are getting an inflated
| figure of 1.91$ per GB.
|
| You should be calculating it this way:
|
| Exchange rate: 73.17 INR = 1 USD Now 9 cents is, 0.09 USD
| = 0.09 * 73.17 = 6.58 INR.
|
| Since PPP is 21.3, 6.58 INR would be 6.58 / 21.3 = 0.3
| USD
|
| So 9 cents in India is equal to 30 cents in USA. Now,
| that is 30 cents per GB and not 1.91$ per GB.
|
| Remember that PPP is INR/USD and not USD/USD.
| tchalla wrote:
| > So 9 cents in India is equal to 30 cents in USA. Now,
| that is 30 cents per GB and not 1.91$ per GB.
|
| I couldn't get this from your earlier comments. I get it
| now.
| Proven wrote:
| The could have credited and celebrated free market capitalism
| (effected, among other things, by _greed_ of the phone suppliers,
| telcos, and app makers), and that would have been illuminating.
|
| Instead it's about "cheap smartphones and data" - as if that
| happened by accident and could have been achieved by other means
| such as government planning and giveaways.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Yeah, Data is cheap and smartphones are plenty.
|
| Indians are voracious consumers of content and healthy
| competition has reduced prices to absurdly low levels.
|
| I'm in an urban area, with connection from one of the biggest
| providers. It costs me about 9 USD a month for unlimited data (I
| mean, about 2 GB a day, BUT, with carry forward, so I have about
| 250 GB of data to use in my account), unlimited calls and sms. I
| stopped worrying about data a long time ago.
|
| And I don't even use JIO, the provider that brought in massive
| reductions in data prices.
|
| Edit : I stopped using WiFi even at home, consume about 40 GB a
| month.
| pythonbase wrote:
| That's really awesome. I am next door and providers here boas
| of having lowest broadband fares in the region.
| iamgopal wrote:
| Same, some evenings at home, five screens playing HD video is
| quite common scenario. Tons of video calling etc. Just three
| four years back, I had to beg to a local ISP to install cable,
| agreeing to absurd charges. Things are moving fast in india.
| Whole progress of next decade can be attributed to Jio.
| officeplant wrote:
| As someone who regularly consumes 1.2TB or more of data a month
| I really wish for uncapped affordable internet plans.
| Unfortunately I'm in the US and outside of a major city.
| cageface wrote:
| Sounds like it's time to revise some of the advice web
| developers get about optimizating page sizes for developing
| markets.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Remember that devices are less powerful, and that outside the
| cities the connections still aren't universally that quick.
|
| That said, many JAMstack providers are so wired into CDNs
| nowadays that actually serving the content closer to these
| users is just a baseline functionality of the webhost.
| jamil7 wrote:
| As if web developers need a reason to make their websites
| slower.
| markdown wrote:
| NO!
|
| Letting yourself go just because you have access to bigger
| clothes isn't healthy.
| C19is20 wrote:
| YES! In that, I fully agree.
| cageface wrote:
| Revise, not throw out entirely.
|
| Optimization always adds complexity. Don't do it more than
| necessary.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Eh, not necessarily. Both the simplest and most optimized
| pages I can think of are straight HTML with no
| Javascript. It takes work to add complexity starting from
| there!
| cageface wrote:
| I've been on this site since 2009. Unfortunately the level of
| discourse has been in pretty steady decline over the last few
| years. Knee jerk responses and mindless downvoting are the
| norm here now.
|
| For a site that's ostensibly catering to engineers it's a sad
| state of affairs. I can't say I get much value out of it
| anymore.
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| They added shadowbans, too.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| While speeds are good and connectivity is cheap, the caveat
| is availability.
|
| Not all areas have good coverage.
|
| And also, lower page sizes save energy and reduce carbon
| emissions.
| [deleted]
| _wldu wrote:
| This sounds awesome. Good, affordable connectivity seems to be
| a basic human right. I wish it was this way everywhere. I'm in
| the US and can only get 1.5Mbit DSL, for which I pay 90 US
| dollars a month (with a basic home phone line). That's the only
| Internet I can get. East Coast USA.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Is this in a smaller rural town or a home very far out? Every
| metropolitan area I've seen at least has near-universal cable
| TV/internet coverage (typically up to 50-300 Mbps), and even
| exurbs these days often have fiber.
| _wldu wrote:
| University town. I'm in the town limits, but on the very
| edge of town. Apartments downtown have fast connections,
| but edge neighborhoods and surrounding areas only have low
| speed options.
| zdragnar wrote:
| If you are in range of cell towers, there is likely a 4g lye
| mvno offering decent speed internet.
|
| I used https://www.ubifi.net/ for a year until I got fiber
| and was quite pleased with it. (No affiliation, i just gad a
| good experience).
| tchalla wrote:
| You can not compare two currencies without including the
| parities. In terms of the US dollar, India has a Purchasing
| Power Parity of 21.276 as of 2019 [0].
|
| > Purchasing power parities (PPPs) are the rates of currency
| conversion that try to equalise the purchasing power of
| different currencies, by eliminating the differences in price
| levels between countries. The basket of goods and services
| priced is a sample of all those that are part of final
| expenditures: final consumption of households and government,
| fixed capital formation, and net exports. This indicator is
| measured in terms of national currency per US dollar
|
| [0] https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-
| parities-p...
| iguy wrote:
| I'm not sure PPP is a great measure here.
|
| It works best when comparing people with relatively similar
| consumption, e.g. asking about the material lives of
| engineers in east- vs. west-germany. Both had cars, radios,
| apartments with indoor plumbing, and awful haircuts, but
| they paid for them with different money. Any exchange rate
| was basically a fiction, but even if the currencies had
| been freely traded, these two still couldn't buy each
| other's goods.
|
| Some people in India have lives similarly comparable to the
| west, e.g. the class who buy iphones. But the ones who make
| this super-cheap data interesting really don't. I mean
| there are riots when the price of onions doubles after a
| poor harvest. It's difficult to imagine a shared basket of
| goods which meaningfully captures the comparison here ---
| between prices experienced by those whose weekly budget can
| flattened by onions, and people in the US.
|
| Probably a better comparison would simply be to quote daily
| wages alongside such prices. GDP is about US$5/day,
| compared to about $175/day in the US.
| tchalla wrote:
| It's fine to take another normalisation metric - no
| metric is perfect. The point was that there is a
| normalisation needed. Far too often I see a comment which
| states, "Oh! It is just 1$ so cheap!". I chose PPP
| because it is meant for making parities. So, 9cents may
| or may not be cheap. We don't know until we use a
| normalisation factor.
| iguy wrote:
| People talk about dog-years too, but past some very crude
| level there's no avoiding knowing something about about
| the lives of dogs, or parrots, or goldfish. At which
| point it's less confusing to use ordinary earth-years for
| everyone.
| tchalla wrote:
| "It is better to be vaguely right and than precisely
| wrong".
| traib wrote:
| First, PPP has its own issues [1] and is probably not the
| best way to compare the price of data.
|
| Second, even after taking PPP into account data is still
| much cheaper in India - 30 USD per month for the thread
| parent after PPP conversion.
|
| Math below:
|
| PPP in [2] is National currency units/US dollar, i.e.
| INR/USD. It says that ~21.3 INR is going to buy you the
| same basket of goods in India that 1 USD buys you in USA.
|
| 9 USD = 9 * 70.394 = ~633.5 INR [3]
|
| 633.5 INR = 633.5 / 21.3 = ~30 USD PPP.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#I
| ssues
|
| [2] https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-
| parities-p...
|
| [3] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/year...
| tchalla wrote:
| > 9 USD = 9 * 70.394 = ~633.5 INR [3]
|
| > 633.5 INR = 633.5 / 21.3 = ~30 USD PPP.
|
| Thanks for taking the time to correct me.
| RIMR wrote:
| If data can be $0.09/GB in India, why does it cost so much more
| here in the USA?
| missedthecue wrote:
| more expensive inputs to construct and maintain cell networks
| in the USA. If you look at Indian telcos and US telcos, they
| have similar profit margins.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I think it's moreso that you can't get blood out of a stone
| (people wouldn't buy it over there if it cost more) and the
| true cost of mobile data distributed over all customers is
| close to $0.
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(page generated 2021-01-06 23:02 UTC)