Airtel’s 4G Fastest in India But Jio 4G Has Best Download Speeds

Airtel is the fastest operator with 4G speeds, but Jio users are getting better download speed than before.

While India is dreaming of 5G already, it’s probably a good idea to get a reality check on the state of 4G connectivity in the country first, and this report from Open Signal says Airtel’s 4G, and even 3G, are the fastest right now.

The report also states that Reliance Jio has seen a spike in its data speed, from 3.9 Mbps to 5.8 Mbps, over the past few months.

But this sudden surge in speed hasn’t helped Jio climb the overall 4G network ladder just yet.

Open Signal has been regularly updating us with the status of the internet bandwidth in the country, and how availability of 4G is expanding over the course of time. And they’ve got some good news to share.

In our last India report, only a single operator had 4G availability greater than 60 percent. Now three of India’s four nationwide 4G operators have surpassed that benchmark. 

Open Signal Report

India’s decision to switch from 3G to 4G, without increasing the tariff, seems to be paying dividends. 

You can’t deny that Reliance Jio (with its freebies) has played a big role in the growth of 4G penetration over the past year or so, which meant they didn’t have the best of the speeds.

But that narrative is gradually changing, with Jio now asking people to pay for its 4G services, which has resulted in easing up of traffic on its network.

Jio’s average 4G download speed climbed from 3.9 Mbps to 5.8 Mbps — an astonishing 49% increase. As the free-data period concluded, something clearly happened to ease the congestion on Jio’s network

Open Signal Report

This is definitely good news for the guys over at Jio, but the work has just started for them. They’ll have to keep on improving the network, especially with their mission to reach the rural consumers with its ‘effectively free’ JioPhone, a 4G VoLTE feature phone coming to fruition.

The competition could further intensify in the coming months, with Airtel and Vodafone also keen on their version of affordable 4G VoLTE devices.

For this particular report, Open Signal has derived its assessment via 7,369,029,252 data points, which were collected from 7,08,504 users during the period between 1 June 1 and 31August 2017.

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