Patna has beaten Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, three key Indian cities, to top 4G availability metric that measures where users get access to an LTE connection most of the time, OpenSignal said.
Mumbai has ranked 15 while Delhi grabbed the 17 spot in 4G availability in India’s 20 largest cities.
“Our measurements show that the disparity in 4G availability between India’s cities is getting slimmer. The difference in 4G availability metric between top-placed Patna with 92.6 percent and 10th-placed Bengaluru with 88.3 percent was just 4.3 percent points,” OpenSignal said.
The OpenSignal survey covered 90 days from December 1, 2017 and took user experience of 4G availability in 20 of India’s largest cities into account.
All 20 cities in its measurements have achieved 4G availability measurements of over 80 percent.
The shrinking disparity between the southern and western tech hubs and other cities reflects the rapid growth of 4G in the country.
Driven by fierce competition, India now has one of the most extensive 4G footprints in the world. The growth in availability of LTE in the country is particularly remarkable, as users were able to connect to an LTE signal over 86 percent of the time which is a rise of some 10 percent points from a year earlier.
The Indian telecom market is still feeling the aftershocks from the debut of Reliance Jio and our city rankings for 4G availability are likely to see further significant shifts in the coming months.
Reliance Jio has played a key role in increasing 4G penetration in India, helping the rural population get 83 million 4G subscriptions out of the total 238 million 4G subscribers by December 2017, said market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).
According to CMR, 35 percent of the 4G subscribers in India will use a 4G-enabled feature phone by 2020, taking the total 4G subscribers to 432 million. Jio also made the incumbents ramp up their technology as they invested more in 4G networks across the country. Jio had 160 million subscribers at the end of December 2017 — an increase of 122 percent.
