Airtel offers fastest 3G and 4G speeds, Jio has the best 4G coverage

OpenSignal, a company that specializes in wireless coverage mapping, has released its latest report on the state of mobile networks in India. The report revealed that Reliance Jio, lagged behind Airtel, Idea and Vodafone in terms of 4G download speeds. However Jio still leads the segment in terms of network availability across the country. The report is based on seven billion tests collected over six months, from over seven lakh mobile devices through the country.

According to the report, Airtel has the fastest 4G download speed among the four national 4G operator. It has an average download speed of 9.1mbps. Vodafone holds the second spot with average 4G download speed of 7.45mbps, followed by Idea at 7.4mbps and Jio at 5.81mbps. 

That said, the report mentions that Jio's 4G LTE speed improved in the last six months, after the free data offer ended in March. During the six month period, Jio increased 49 percent (from 3.9mbps to 5.8mbps), while Airtel saw a decline from 11.5mbps to 9.1mbps.

Airtel also topped the 3G speed test as well with download speed of 3.62Mbps, followed by Vodafone at 3.12mbps, Idea at 2.6mbps, BSNL at 1.76mbps and RCom at 1.71mbps. Jio was not mentioned in the list because it is a 4G network only.

However, when it comes to overall download speeds (which includes 2G, 3G and 4G), Jio was ahead of Airtel and others. Jio offered average download speed of 5.81mbps, followed by Airtel at 5.05mbps, Idea at 3.69mbps, BSNL at 1.76mbps, and RCom at 1.71mbps. Jio topped the list despite being slowest to offer 4G download speeds, because, it operates only on super fast 4G networks, while the other telecom operators have users accessing internet through 2G and 3G network as well.

Jio also has the best LTE coverage, covering 95.59 percent of the country. Airtel was at the bottom of the ranking with just 57.16 percent of LTE coverage.

Source