A number of reports have emerged that paint a comprehensive picture of the condition of mobile internet connectivity across India. The reports include The State of LTE and State of Mobile Networks: India by OpenSignal, the Ookla Speedtest Global Index and TRAI's Myspeed app. TRAI updates its site with the average speeds of the last three months, as well as the speeds of the previous month on the first of every month. OpenSignal, Ookla, and TRAI all crowdsource the network performance metrics from applications installed on smartphones.
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the data shows how India stands compared to the rest of the world when it comes to coverage, the coverage of each individual operator, the speeds in India and around the world and the speeds by the operator. OpenSignal also tracks latency, with a granular detail for each telecom service provider. The TRAI Myspeed app does not track global data but makes available upload and download speeds over 3G and 4G LTE networks in the different telecom circles across India.
Among the 77 countries in the study by OpenSignal, India comes in eleventh in the world when it comes to coverage, with 84 percent of the country having access to 4G LTE connectivity. However, when it comes to speeds, India is right at the bottom of the list, with just about the lowest speeds in the world, among the countries considered for the report.
The granular breakdown of the coverage shows that Reliance Jio has a much greater coverage than the national average when all telecom operators are considered, with more than 95 percent of the country covered by a Jio 4G LTE signal.
Jio has clearly helped give a boost to coverage across the nation. Andrea Toth from OpenSignal says, "LTE availability in India is remarkable. The users were able to connect to an LTE signal over 84 percent of the time — a rise of over 10 percentage points from a year earlier. This places India ahead of more established countries in the 4G landscape such as Sweden, Taiwan, Switzerland or the UK. Jio's widespread 4G access, along with its at-first free and later heavily discounted data and voice plans, quickly won the hearts — and wallets — of more than 100 million mobile users across the country."
When it comes to mobile internet speeds, where 3G and 4G LTE are considered together, India comes in the 109th place in the world according to data collected by Ookla.
Doug Suttles, co-founder and general manager at Ookla said, "Both mobile and fixed broadband internet in India are getting faster, that's good news for all Indian consumers no matter which operator or plan they use to access the internet. India still has a long way to go to catch up with countries that have top speeds around the world, however, we at Ookla are highly optimistic about the capacity for growth that is available in the Indian market and looks forward to watching how the market grows in this coming new year."