Thus, a JioPhone user will likely have a very low churn both due to the ‘refund feature’ and the software platform,” the Bank said in the report while staying clear from calling it a net neutrality issue. Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said a walled garden, which is any set of pre-installed apps (Jio apps or non-Jio apps) on a handset where the consumer cannot install competing apps, flirts with the boundaries of net neutrality. “I am not very sure of technicalities but unless there is an independent app store, the net neutrality purists won’t be happy. That operators can’t act as gatekeepers is the fundamental premise of net neutrality,” an industry analyst said. According to Nikhil Pahwa, co-founder of the savetheinternet.in campaign for net neutrality in India, and founder of digital news site Medianama.com, there is not enough information available on the JioPhone yet to say whether the service.

Source: Hindustan Times July 24, 2017 03:00 UTC