Vodafone Idea (Vi) offers the fastest 4G speeds to consumers in India. Be it upload or download, Vi offered the fastest 4G speeds to consumers compared to its arch-rivals, Jio and Airtel (as per Opensignal report for April). However, the telco is still unable to impress customers enough to stop them from leaving its network. On top of that, the company is struggling to add new users to its network.
The Opensignal report clearly indicates that apart from offering the best download and upload speeds, Vi's network doesn't do well in other areas such as video experience, games experience, voice app experience, 4G availability, and more. Jio and Airtel are ahead of Vi in these areas.
Vodafone Idea Must Face Less Capacity Issues than Airtel, Jio
Vi has significantly fewer users on its network compared to what Airtel and Jio have to serve, and this means a capacity advantage for Vi. Theoretically, the customers on Vodafone Idea's network will face much less congestion than the customers on Airtel and Jio's networks, given all the operators have a similar kind of spectrum holding in a particular circle. This basically means Vi's networks would be able to handle customers better because they won't face capacity issues the way Jio and Airtel's networks do.
There are over 1.1 billion subscriptions in India, making the country the second-largest telecommunications market in the world. Thus, of course, there are going to be congestion issues some time or the other.
Offering the fastest 4G speeds is great, but Vi also needs to find an edge over delivering a great and a convenient experience to customers in other areas as well. After a certain limit, every extra Mbps of speed offered doesn't add any value to the experience of the customers. So, for example, if you can get a 100 Mbps speed from an operator's network, which can also deliver a great experience in other areas of mobile consumption, then you wouldn't look at the operator who can offer 110 Mbps of speed but doesn't do well in other areas.