Airtel offered the best video experience, Jio leads in 4G availability: OpenSignal

OpenSignal on Tuesday released its latest report on mobile network experience in India. According to the mobile analytics company, Airtel fared better than the rivals in terms of video experience, voice app experience, download speed experience, and latency experience. Reliance Jio fared better than others on 4G availability and 4G coverage experience. The report assessed the mobile network experience for over a period of 90 days beginning December 1, 2019.

According to OpenSignal, Airtel maintained lead in terms of the video experience as it upgraded its rating from Fair to Good. Vodafone also joined Airtel in the Good category.

"We recorded the highest increase on its network, as the operator boosted its score to close the gap on the market leader. This means that users on both these networks now experience faster video load times and fewer interruptions during playback while streaming videos on their smartphone using mobile data services," said the analytics firm in a release.

For voice app experience, OpenSignal rated Airtel "slightly" ahead of the competition. "Idea, Jio and Vodafone remained in the Poor rating bracke. This means that our users' Voice App Experience on these networks will be marred by frequent distortion, clicking sounds or silence experienced during the call," it said.

On download experience scale, Airtel maintained the lead, but OpenSignal points out Vodafone and Idea have begun to improve their performance. Vodafone and Idea's overall download speeds improved over 1.5 Mbps to 9.5 Mbps and 9.2 Mbps respectively, while Airtel's Download Speed Experience grew by almost half a megabit.

Reliance Jio continued to dominate in terms of 4G availability in the country. "Jio also won our inaugural 4G Coverage Experience award in India, while Airtel finished second with 6.8 points. Opensignal's 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how our mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator's network. Measured on a scale of 0-10, it analyzes the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by Opensignal users of all networks," it added.