Airtel leads 3G and 4G Internet speed, Jio tops 4G reach: OpenSignal

April 20, 2017

OpenSignal has officially released its India mobile Internet speed result measuring the performance of Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, among others.

Airtel is on the top of all — 3G and 4G — speed awards, OpenSignal said in a blog post on April 20.

Vodafone India is ranked second in 3G and 4G speed. This will be a major setback for Jio customers. Reliance Jio recently announced that it has 72 million subscribers on its 4G network across India.

ALSO READ: Indian Internet speed report from OpenSignal

Ookla, another speed performance rating agency, has rated Airtel as the top telecom operator in terms of mobile Internet speeds for 2016.

“Airtel didn’t just win our 4G speed award, it wound up on top of our 3G and overall rankings as well. We measured Airtel’s average LTE download speed at 11.5 Mbps, which was 3 Mbps faster than the results we measured on its nearest rivals Vodafone and and Idea,” OpenSignal said.

Jio leads LTE availability

Reliance Jio networks’ 4G signals are available 91.6 percent of the time, an exceptional availability measurement by any global standard. No other Indian operator scored higher than 60 percent in the 4G availability tests done by OpenSignal.

OpenSignal did not reveal 3G availability test done for operators such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone and Tata Docomo. Reliance Jio is not present in 3G mobile market in India.
4G speeds in India are slow

While India’s telecom operators are competing heavily on speed, India’s 4G speeds are quite low. India’s mobile operators fell well short of the 17.4 Mbps global average for 4G download speed, said OpenSignal.

Airtel, Vodafone and Jio all performed well in select circles, though in different metrics.

OpenSignal has compiled 4G internet speed performance of all operators in Delhi, Karnataka, Mumbai and Tamil Nadu. Airtel is the top perfomer in 4G download speed, while Jio scores in 4G availability.

OpenSignal has also released 3G download speed, showing Airtel on top position. Vodafone takes #2 position in 3G Internet download speed.

OpenSignal’s above chart shows that Airtel is above all telecom operators in India in terms of 4G download speed. Vodaone and Idea Cellular are the next big operators in terms of 4G download speed. Reliance Jio has the last rank in 4G download speed, the chart shows.