If the cablecos of the US and Europe are trying to emulate Free Mobile’s disruptive effect in France (see previous item), their real role model may be seen in India, where Reliance Jio has already boasted of faster uptake rates than Facebook, and has forced the established MNOs to write off investments worth between $40bn and $50bn. Bharti Airtel’s chairman Sunil Mittal made this estimate, blaming the prolonged launch period in which Jio was offering free or heavily discounted services, pushing the other MNOs to cut their own prices, and to demand that the regulator, TRAI, should take action to protect them. In an interview with India’s Economic Times, Mittal said that if a company in the US or Europe pursued the…