Reliance Jio’s 4G slower than Bharti Airtel’s 3G: survey

Bharti Airtel has topped India's telecom service providers in the 4G LTE download speed, while new entrant Reliance Jio stands a distant fourth, according to a report by wireless coverage mapping firm OpenSignal.

Compared with Bharti Airtel's average 4G speed of 11.5 Megabits per second (Mbps), Jio clocked a speed of 3.92 Mbps -  slower than Airtel's average 3G internet speed of 4.77 Mbps.

The OpenSignal report found a wide disparity in terms of speed and consistency in different regions across the country.

In terms of 4G download speed, Vodafone and Idea stand second and third, with internet speeds of 8.59 Mbps and 8.34 Mbps respectively.

In terms of 4G internet reach, however, Reliance Jio appears to be the only 4G network offering countrywide availability. Reliance Jio enjoys 91.57 per cent 4G network coverage in India, much higher than rivals. On this parameter, Airtel is a distant fourth, while Idea and Vodafone take the second and third spots respectively. 

Brendan Gill, chief executive officer of OpenSignal, says that Mumbai has the fastest 4G speed. ''We haven't yet done a full geographic breakdown for India, but we have done some interesting regional analysis. We looked at the top 4G cities in India and found that although Mumbai had the fastest speed, Gujarat's two biggest cities, including Ahmedabad, provided the most consistent access to LTE signals,'' he told Business Standard.

Overall, India's mobile data speeds continue to be quite low. The fastest average speeds measured by Opensignal - 11.6 Mbps on Airtel's LTE network - is much lower than the average global 4G download speed of 17.4 Mbps.

Bharti Airtel also topped the charts in overall internet speed test, taking into account the average download speed experienced by users on 4G LTE, 3G and 2G networks. Its average overall speed of 6.15 Mbps was much higher than Vodafone's 5.13 Mbps, Idea's 4.16 Mbps, Reliance Jio's 3.92 Mbps, BSNL's 3.41 Mbps and Reliance Communications' 2.63 Mbps.