Why Reliance Jio is lagging behind in India's 4G speed race
Telecom operator Reliance Jio crossed 125 million subscribers recently. As explained by Mukesh Ambani – Jio's chairman – the company taking advantage of its "superior 4G VoLTE" network is looking to bring in millions more in the coming days. However, if the latest report by OpenSignal – London-based firm that benchmarks the quality and coverage of mobile networks across the world – is to be believed, Jio's network is proving to be superior only on paper as it has clocked up the slowest 4G LTE speeds in India on average.
The data collected from OpenSignal’s new peak speed metric test claims that Jio is lagging behind competitors with average speed at 50 mbps nearly 13 times faster than its everyday 4G download speed of 3.9 mbps. In contrast, its main competitor Airtel leads the pack when it comes to reliability with an average peak speed of 56.6 mbps – five times faster than its average 4G download test of 11.5 mbps. Both Vodafone and Idea with an average download speed of 9 mbps also prove more reliable than Mukesh Ambani's Jio.
Slower than 3G
The data paints a worse picture when Jio's speeds are compared to the outdated 3G platform. As per another report published earlier in April, Jio's state-of-the-art 4G network – built at a cost of Rs 1.9 lakh crore – enjoys 91.57 per cent coverage in India – much higher than its rivals – but when it comes to quality of service it is not even an upgrade on Airtel's outdated 3G network.
Even though it enjoys a crucial technological advantage over its competitors, Jio's average download speed of 3.9 mbps falls shy of Airtel 3G's average speed of 4.4 mbps.
Jio effect: 4G speeds in India even slower than Pakistan
The Reliance Jio revolution has seen India making it to the list of top 15 countries in terms of 4G LTE network availability; but as these numbers explain, when it comes to download speeds, India is far from where it would like to be.
Despite the efforts of incumbents, India has been ranked 74 – even below countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka – when it comes to average speeds. A quick look at the report published by OpenSignal on the state of mobile internet across the world reveals that the average 4G download speed in the country – 5.1 mbps – is less than a third of the global average at 17.1 mbps.
But why are 4G speeds in India so slow?
As per OpenSignal, the relatively new 4G infrastructure in India is technically capable of delivering far faster speeds but fails to do so because of not being fully optimised to handle the volume of data people are consuming on a daily basis.
The issue – more of a capacity bottleneck – the report claims can be fixed – especially Jio which showed a great divide between its peak and average speeds – by pumping in more money to improve infrastructure to hand.
"Heavy usage is bound to tax any network, forcing users to vie against one another for bandwidth. Our data shows that Jio's slow average 4G speeds aren't a technical limitation, but rather a capacity bottleneck. As Jio adds more capacity - either through new spectrum or building more cell sites - or as Jio's mobile data consumption levels drop, then its typical download speeds should increase."