Jio 4G Availability Continues to Grow as Airtel Attempts to Close the Gap: Opensignal

Reliance Jio has continued to grow its 4G availability in India to reach as much as 97.8 percent coverage in the last six months, whereas Airtel soared by more than three percent and moved close to the 90 percent coverage mark, Opensignal claimed in its mobile network experience report for the month of October. The London-based network analytics company showed that Jio has continued its domination when it comes to 4G availability in India, followed by Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea. Region-wise, Jio users in 32 cities across the country are reported to have received 4G availability of at least 98 percent.

While Jio's national 4G availability score grew by merely 0.3 percentage points to hit the mark of 97.8 percent, its arch-rival Airtel grew by 3.6 percentage points and reached 89.2 percent, Opensignal noted in the report. Vodafone and Idea both, on the other hand, remained far behind in the race with particularly Vodafone reportedly getting a marginal 0.6 percent increase and Idea fell by more than four percent.

Opensignal underlined that the overall 4G availability in India is similar to what's generally available in highly mature markets.

Apart from marking growth in terms of availability, Jio has retained its leadership on the part of latency experience. Opensignal claimed that the Mumbai-based operator enjoyed the fastest network response time of 54.2 milliseconds. In contrast, Airtel is said to miss its lead by a difference of three milliseconds.

Through the regional analysis of 42 cities, Opensignal has found that the 4G availability of Jio led the race with its highest winning score of 98.9 percent in Ludhiana. Airtel, on the other hand, reportedly gained with 90 percent of 4G availability in 37 cities. The telco is said to have received the highest score of 94.2 percent coverage in Kolkata.

"Our users on Airtel's network are seeing some very impressive progress in 4G availability, but the operator still has some way to go to catch up with Jio," Opensignal said in the report.

The report used the data collected over 90 days beginning June 1, 2019. Moreover, Opensignal claimed that it had examined mobile network experience of all five major mobile networks in the country, namely Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Jio, and Vodafone.