India’s Average LTE Speeds at 5.1 Mbps, Jio’s 4G LTE Coverage Major Contributor

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When it comes to mobile network analysis for understanding your network coverage, mobile connectivity, etc. OpenSignal produces some of the best in class reports. They have a global presence, and their detailed reports are often used by various firms to better understand the shortcomings in their products and services. Their apps on both Android and iOS helps users to track various cell towers and the speeds that are obtained on their network at a given place. Using all this data, the company has just come up with a new report as of June 2017.

This new report, explaining the State of LTE till June 2017 shows how various countries across the globe are doing as far as the LTE connections are concerned. The report highly emphasizes the fact that although 5G is now taking over the network scenario slowly, there’s still a lot of activity surrounding the 4G LTE connectivity. The reports suggest that South Korea is indeed leading the whole 4G LTE connectivity space across the globe. However, one of the most highlighted fact which the report mentions is about India.

Yes, according to the OpenSignal reports, India has made a big leap on the global 4G availability chart. OpenSignal users were able to find an LTE signal 81.6% of the time in the first quarter, up from 71.6% in the third quarter of 2016. These numbers are not only just high, but they are high enough to rank India in the top 20 of the 75 countries in our State of LTE report. In fact, India is currently standing at 15th position on the chart which is quite an amazing thing.

Reliance Jio 4G Vs Airtel 4G Speed Test Comparison, Indoor Coverage – Mid 2016

What’s more interesting is the fact that most of this improvement which we are seeing in the numbers come due to a single operator. Yes, you guessed it right, it’s Reliance’s Jio 4G. OpenSignal describes this as a “Rare Instance” where a single operator can have an outsized impact on a mobile market in such a short amount of time. In their most recent reports in India, OpenSignal measured Jio’s 4G availability at more than 90%. On the other hand, the other operators (Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, etc.) all fell below 60% availability in their tests.

Jio’s launch of an LTE-only nationwide mobile network has made 4G service much more accessible throughout the country to millions of subscribers. However, there is an another side of this story which you need to know as well. OpenSignal describes Jio has a double-edged sword. Why? Well, the onslaught of data usage Jio’s launch has generated has taxed its network capacity, which has driven down 4G speeds. India’s average LTE download speed was 5.1 Mbps in their new report. This is a huge drop of more than a megabit per second in just six months time.

OpenSignal also states that these speeds are only marginally faster than the average 3G connection, which we measured at 4.4 Mbps. Yes, that’s not really great news. So although has Jio has made 4G services far more accessible in India, it does come with an expense of lower average speeds. Having said that, we would like to know your thoughts on this. Do you think the entry of Reliance Jio into the Indian Telecom sector has been a boost or has it been a disaster? Be sure to let us know by dropping a comment down below. And also, stay tuned to PhoneRadar for more info like this.

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