It’s no surprise countries like india are indeed treating phones as infra, with their whole government stack centered around smartphones. You’re forced to have and use one, but in return you get free transactions, strong identity and various other perks. It _is_ a monopoly, but the monopoly is the government so everyone has a say on how its run and audited. It’s still strange to me how the states allows private companies to do things the at should be public goods/services.