OpenSignal, the global network reliability testing service, today released its second State of Mobile Networks report for India. In this report, OpenSignal drew on more than 7 billion tests collected this summer from 708,504 mobile devices throughout India. OpenSignal conducted this report from June 1, 2017, to August 31, 2017.
In the report, OpenSignal stated that Bharti Airtel still leads the internet speed chart in India. "As it did six months ago, Airtel took both our 4G speed and 3G speed awards. We measured average LTE downloads of 9.2 Mbps and 3G downloads of 3.6 Mbps on its networks," said the OpenSignal report.
However, like it reported last month, Reliance Jio's LTE speeds in the last six months have seen an uphill, especially after the operator started charging its customers. Reliance Jio reported an average download speed of 5.8 Mbps. Also, OpenSignal says that Jio has impressive LTE coverage across the country.
OpenSignal also stated that the speed rankings in the second report remained unchanged. As said earlier, Airtel topped the chart yet again with an average 9.2 Mbps 4G speed and 3.6 Mbps 3G speed respectively.
Idea Cellular and Vodafone are still deadlocked for second place in the 4G download, each with a measured average LTE speed of 7.4 Mbps. Despite its big speed surge, Jio still ranked last in 4G speed.
Furthermore, OpenSignal's overall speed metric takes both 3G and 4G speeds into account. It considers the levels of access customers have to each service. In this segment, Jio topped the list with 5.8 Mbps average speed, beating out Airtel's overall speed result of 5.1 Mbps.
Having said that, the difference maker here is Jio's 4G reach. "While our Airtel testers spent nearly half their time on slower 3G connections, Jio was able to provide a relatively faster 4G link with the vast majority of the time in our measurements," said OpenSignal in its blog post.
4G Availability
Reliance Jio is India's first LTE-only network, meaning the network won't drop to 3G or 2G technology like other operators network technology. The report says that Reliance Jio has the best LTE coverage with 95.6% across the country. Meanwhile, Airtel ranked at the bottom of OpenSignal charts. Airtel customers were only able to find a 4G signal 57.2% of the time. However, when you consider the same with OpenSignal's first report, Airtel LTE availability is increased, but still miles behind the coverage of Reliance Jio.
