Reliance Jio forces the Indian mobile market to restructure

摘要

There is a saying in London that your expected bus will often fail to turn up on time only for two or more to turn up together. So it is with mergers and takeovers involving mobile operators in India. After a decade during which many plans to bring together more than ten operators failed to come to fruition -a process described in detail in Curwen and Whalley (2017) - the market structure has been turned on its head within the space of one year. The trigger was the attempt in 2016 by new entrant Reliance Jio to lock up the long-term evolution (LTE, more commonly known as 4G) market, in its infancy at the time, by in effect providing a free service.