Reliance Jio becomes fastest 4G network in India

New entrant Reliance Jio has overtaken rivals to  become the fastest 4G network in India.

According to a TRAI report, Jio topped the chart in 4G network speed for the month of April, recording an all-time high download speed of 19.12 megabit per second.

The speed came in the month which saw Jio end the free services for users who did not subscribe to any of its plans. According to commentators, the fall in number of active users could be one of the reasons why Jio 4G recorded faster speeds. 

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) uses its MySpeed application to collect and compute data download speed on a real-time basis. A user can theoretically download one Bollywood movie in about five minutes at 16mbps speed. However this speed cannot be sustained and such fast downloads are never possible.

Leaving behind the rest of the operators, Reliance notched a download speed of 19.12mbps during April, bettering its own performance of 18.48mbps demonstrated in the previous month, according to the report.

Also, April happened to be the fourth consecutive month of Jio topping the speed chart.

The month of April saw the download speed on Idea Cellular network at 13.70mbps and Vodafone network at 13.38mbps. The same order is repeated for average speeds which are Jio first at 18.4Mbps, Idea at 11.8Mbps, Vodafone at 11.5Mbps, and Airtel at 9.9Mbps.

For peak 4G upload speeds, Jio networks remained at the third position for the second consecutive month. In May, Idea Cellular was leading at 8.459Mbps, followed by Vodafone (7.333Mbps) and Reliance Jio (5.275Mbps). Airtel took the fourth position with 4.641Mbps 4G upload speed.

Vodafone India and Idea Cellular plan to merge their operations to create the country's largest mobile phone operator worth over $23 billion with a 35 per cent market share (See: Idea, Vodafone India announce merger).