Reliance Jio’s 4G speeds increase after free data period ends

Reliance Jio's 4G speeds are now increasing with the free data period ending according to a new blogpost by OpenSignal. According to OpenSignal, Airtel has so far been the number one in 4G speeds in India while it rated Jio's network as the slowest in the country, averaging download speeds of 3.9 mbps in July 2017.  OpenSignal says in the blog post that Jio's speeds have increased by 50 per cent.

OpenSignal is expected to soon come out with its second State of Mobile Networks report for India. The company noted that in Jio's case it had topped the 4G network availability chart in their India analysis, but the rise in user base had come at the cost of network speed.

Reliance Jio already boasts over 100 million users in India, only a year after the official launch. According to commentators, the number could rise with the JioPhone expected to roll out soon. JioPhone is 4G VoLTE feature phone and could help the Mukesh Ambani network sign up new users.

However, as OpenSignal points out in the blog, the biggest negative of all those free data offers was that the LTE network speeds for Jio were not as high.

The last six months have seen Jio's typical 4G download vault from 3.9 Mbps to 5.8 Mbps - that's almost a 50 per cent rise in speed, according to OpenSignal analysis.

"It could be that Jio has upgraded its network, adding capacity to feed its customers' unquenchable thirst for data. It could be that customers started fleeing once the free data promotion ended, though a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey found that most of Jio's customers weren't likely to jump ship. Or it could be that the customers are reining in their data use now that they actually have to pay for the megabytes and gigabytes they consume," OpenSignal's Kevin Fitchard said in a blog.