OpenSignal today released its 'Mobile Network Experience Report September 2020' for the Indian market. The report focusses on several factors like gaming experience award, download experience, upload experience, video experience, 4G LTE availability and more. In the September 2020 report as well, Bharti Airtel topped the chart in terms of average download speed and it is closely followed by Vi. OpenSignal, for the first time, also tested mobile gaming experience across different operators in India. The firm also stated Reliance Jio continues to lead the chart in terms of 4G availability, however, Airtel is closing the gap. Continue reading to know more about the state of mobile networks in India during the month of September.
Airtel 4G Download Speeds Better Than Others
As we all know, Vodafone and Idea became a single brand recently and it is the first time OpenSignal has treated them as a single operator- Vi. The network testing firm has examined mobile network experience of the four main mobile network operators in India- Airtel, BSNL, Jio and Vi, over a period of 90 days beginning May 1, 2020. The tests have been conducted across 49 of India's largest cities.
Starting with the 4G download speeds, Bharti Airtel has retained the top spot for the sixth report in a row with a score of 10.4 Mbps. However, Vi is now very close to Airtel as it recorded a speed of 10.1 Mbps. While Airtel saw an increase in average download speeds, the same for Reliance Jio declined by 0.4 Mbps to 6.9 Mbps. BSNL’s Download Speed Experience score fell by 0.2 Mbps compared with OpenSignal's last report to 2.7 Mbps.
As for the upload speeds, Vi continues to be the leader and has again won the Upload Speed Experience award in September 2020 report with a score of 3.5 Mbps that's 0.7 Mbps ahead of second-placed Airtel with 2.8 Mbps. Vi' score is also 56.1% higher than that of Jio's (2.3 Mbps) and 4.3 times higher than that of BSNL's (1.0 Mbps).
Airtel Offers the Best Gaming Experience
As noted, OpenSignal has assessed the mobile gaming experience for the first time. OpenSignal monitored how the real-time multiplayer gaming experience differs across operators in India. Again, Airtel came out on top and won the OpenSignal Games Experience award with a score of 55.6 out of 100. Vi is slightly behind Airtel with a score of 55.2.
OpenSignal says the Games Experience metric is all about the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on smartphones connected to servers located around the world. The overall score revealed by OpenSignal is based on several parameters including latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (promotion of data packets that never reach their destination). OpenSignal tested the parameters on popular games like Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor.
Lastly, Reliance Jio once again won on the 4G Availability aspect. Reliance Jio has an impressive 98.7% 4G availability and it is closely followed by Bharti Airtel with an impressive 95.6%.
