It has become the general consensus in the telecom industry right now that the latest launch of the JioFiber home broadband service has been underwhelming as compared to what the public had expected from the Mukesh Ambani led telecom operator. Perhaps, while the public expected a repetition of the 2016 history, that is something that Reliance Jio could not pull off with the announcement of the plans of JioFiber. Whether it is the data offering, the added benefits or the pricing, the consumers think that they could have gotten a little more. There are already chatters floating around the rivalling plans which are pre-existing in the broadband sector and how the consumers can make informed choices. But, apart from this, the overall speed which Reliance Jio provides as part of its JioFiber service might have seen a deterioration too. Why do we say this? Read ahead to find out.
Reading Into Netflix ISP Index Rankings for JioFiber
One of the major indexes when it comes to tracking the speeds of internet service providers in India is the Netflix ISP Index. While other reports like Tutela and OpenSignal focus on telecom operators, Netflix’s report very accurately traces wired broadband service providers and the speeds which they provide to their subscribers. For the last two months, Reliance JioFiber or Giga Fiber, as it appears on the ranking till now, had been on the third place. But now, the telecom operator has sunk to the fourth position. Airtel has now taken the third position.
Decline of JioFiber Speed Continues
It is worth noting that ever since the service launched, Reliance JioFiber has led the Netflix ISP Index by a large margin. It stayed on the top of charts for quite a long time before being forced to the second spot by 7 Star Digital in May 2019. Next month only, the JioFiber slipped to the third spot as Spectranet also climbed higher than JioFiber indicating that a lot more subscribers were signing up for the service and likely dividing the bandwidth.
Airtel Broadband Now Ranks Third
What’s also interesting to note is that Reliance JioFiber also had the worst slump in the index score between the months of July to August. Until now, the JioFiber index was slowly coming down from its top score of 3.64, but between July and August, the telco’s index fell from 3.5 to 3.17, which is a very sharp decline. However, the telecom operator was not alone as other broadband service providers went through a similar decline. But, this surely gave the edge to Airtel broadband as it was able to hold ground and managed to peg an index of 3.21 by the end of August. In the previous month, Airtel Broadband had an index of 3.4.
