Jio Leads in 4G Availability in India but Trails Airtel in 4G Speeds: Ookla

Since Reliance Jio's entry into the soap, the battle for supremacy in the telecom industry has been quite intense, with telecom operators trying to widen their subscriber base by competing on the fronts of pricing as well as the overall quality of their services. As per Ookla's network analysis report for the period between Q3 and Q4 2018, Jio has the upper hand when it comes to general availability as well as 4G network availability over its rivals. Airtel, on the other hand, was crowned the operator offering the fastest 4G Internet speed in the country, ahead of Jio and others, based on a cumulative upload and download speed score.

Jio leads 4G availability

Ookla's report states that Jio's general availability was the best among all operators in the country, with Jio subscribers being able to access the network in 99.3 percent of the surveyed locations where the company's telecom services are available. Jio was followed by Airtel with a general availability score of 99.1 percent, while Vodafone and Idea took the third and fourth spot with a general availability score of 99 percent and 98.9 percent respectively.

Airtel led the charts ahead of Jio and others when it comes 4G as well as overall cellular network speed

Jio trails Airtel in 4G speeds

As far as 4G internet speed goes, Airtel emerged as the fastest telecom operator with an average speed score of 11.23 Mbps. In Ookla's words, the speed score is a combined metric which takes into account the upload and download speed across multiple performance tiers. Airtel is followed by Vodafone with a speed score of 9.13 Mbps, while Jio took the third spot with a 7.11 Mbps speed score. Talking about Airtel's dominance on the front of 4G internet speed, Bharti Airtel's CTO, Randeep Sekhon said, “We are delighted to be once again rated as the fastest mobile network even as our network availability crosses 99 percent." Interestingly, Reliance Jio was ranked as the fastest telecom operator in India by TRAI based on data published by the MySpeed portal last month. 

Jio again leads the race by a significant margin when it comes to 4G network availability. As per Ookla's report, Jio's 4G network availability was measured at 98.8 percent in the span between 2018's third and final quarters. Airtel took the second spot with a much lower 4G availability output of 90 percent, while Vodafone and Idea lagged far behind with 4G availability scores of 84.6 percent and 82.8 percent respectively.