Airtel tops 4G download speed, Jio in coverage area: OpenSignal

Bharti Airtel has topped the chart of 4G service providers with 9.31 mbps download speed on its network, a report by broadband parameters research firm OpenSignal said.

Idea Cellular and Vodafone followed Airtel with 7.27 mbps and 6.98 mbps download speed respectively while Jio network was found to be the slowest compared to the three operators with a download speed of 5.13 mbps, according to tests conducted by OpenSignal between December 2017 to February 2018.

"Airtel held onto our 3G and 4G speed awards since OpenSignal's last report, and it wrested our overall speed award away from Jio, locking down the top spot in all three of our speed categories. Jio, however, remained the closest contender in overall speed due to its high level of 4G access," OpenSignal report said.

In overall speed, Airtel registered 6 mbps download speed while Jio recorded 5.1 mbps download speed.

Idea, Vodafone and state-run BSNL followed Jio in terms of overall download speed.

In overall speed test, OpenSignal considered download speed across 4G, 3G and 2G network of individual operators.

Airtel also lead the chart for 3G downlaod speed with 2.73 mbps average top speed.

The broadband speed measurement has become bone of contention in the industry as test conducted by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has found Reliance Jio as the fastest 4G services providers in several months.

Jio, however, found top spot in terms of 4G network coverage, as per the report.

"Jio continued to dominate our 4G availability metric as our testers were able to access an LTE (4G) signal 96.4 per cent of the time," the report said.

In 4G availability test OpenSignal measures how often users can access a 4G network rather than a measure of geographic or population coverage.

Jio was followed by Vodafone in 4G coverage.

"While India is making big leaps forward in 4G availability, we can't say the same thing about 4G speed. There was very little change in our speed metrics since our last report. Our results show Airtel's 4G speeds ticked up incrementally, while the other three operators saw their speeds fall off slightly since our last report," OpenSignal said.