Airtel offers fastest 4G download speeds, Reliance Jio tops availability: OpenSignal report

Bharti Airtel has displayed fastest download speeds of 9.6 mbps and best video experience across all telecom circles in India, while Reliance Jio has extended its 4G availability to 97 per cent, according to OpenSignal's latest mobile network experience report.

Airtel has excelled in the download speed experience category by scoring 9.6 mbps, followed by Vodafone (7.9 mbps), Idea (7.6 mbps), Jio (6.7 mbps) and 3G-only BSNL (3.1 mbps). The download speeds are key for streaming of online content, especially videos and games, said mobile analytics company Opensignal.

Latency is crucial for response time. Jio has won the battle on latency with users on its network experiencing response time of 54.2 milliseconds, followed by Airtel at 57.1 milliseconds.

The latencies have improved over the past six months across all operators. As per April 2019 data, Jio's latency was 62.5 milliseconds.

"The lower latency is on a network, the better experience you'll receive on a host of mobile applications and services, from web browsing to voice over IP to real-time multi-player gaming," the report says.

Vodafone topped in voice app experience -- a new metric introduced by Opensignal in the latest survey. This captures the quality perceived by users of voice communication mobile apps -- WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype.

Vodafone scored 72.6 that was marginally better than Airtel's 72. Though this parameter is important from the users' point of view, for operators, voice calls made through OTT (over-the-top) apps directly compete with their own voice call services.