A new OpenSignal report claims that Airtel is faster than Reliance Jio when it comes to average 4G speeds in India. This is in contrast to TRAI’s MySpeed metric which rates the latter as having the fastest speeds in the country.
As per OpenSignal, Reliance Jio has an average LTE speed of 3.9Mbps and an average peak speed of 50Mbps. The former represents the aggregate performance of the operator from December 2016 to February 2017, while the latter is supposed to represent the maximum speed achievable under optimal conditions.
The disparity is pretty big and can be explained away when considering the sheer number of people who have been using Jio’s services since its launch. Offering free unlimited data has resulted in a toll for the company’s bandwidth as millions of people overtaxed the network.
In comparison, Airtel has achieved average 4G speeds of 11.5Mbps and average peak speeds of 56.6Mbps within the same time period. Vodafone and Idea boast of 36.5Mbps and 29.8Mbps average peak speeds, respectively, which is 4 times faster than its average 4G speed.
As for the discrepancy between OpenSignal and TRAI’s MySpeed app, the former thinks this may have come about because the regulator measured the operator performance under ideal conditions, not real-world ones. There’s also the fact that TRAI’s numbers are dependent on people using the app and not a wide-ranging survey.
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OpenSignal believes that things may improve for Jio in the long run since it has stopped its free extravaganza. It’s already seeing signs of the gap between peak and average speeds closing since speeds are increasing due to more manageable levels of consumption.