Reliance Jio tops 4G speed in August: TRAI

Airtel followed Jio with an average download speed of 8.2 mbps, and was followed by Vodafone (7.7 mbps) and Idea Cellular (6.1 mbps) in August.

A woman rides her scooter past advertisements of Reliance Industries' Jio telecoms unit, in Ahmedabad, India, July 5, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave (REUTERS)

Reliance Jio continued to maintain its lead in 4G mobile broadband chart with an average download speed of 21.3 megabit per second (mbps) in August, according to the latest report published by telecom regulator TRAI.

Vodafone, however, maintained lead in terms of upload with 5.5 mbps speed.

The download speed helps users access video online and messages received by them, among others, while upload speed helps users send photo, video and other documents to people online.

Airtel followed Jio with an average download speed of 8.2 mbps, and was followed by Vodafone (7.7 mbps) and Idea Cellular (6.1 mbps) in August. Though Vodafone and Idea have merged their mobile businesses, Trai measured their performance separately as the integration of networks of both companies is currently on.

In the upload segment, Idea network followed Vodafone with 5.1 mbps speed, and was followed by Jio (4.4 mbps) and Airtel (3.1 mbps).

State-owned firm BSNL, which has been waiting for allocation of 4G spectrum from the government, led the chart in both 3G download and upload average speeds. The network of the public sector telecom firm recorded a 3G download speed of 2.6 mbps and an upload speed of 1.2 mbps. In download speed, BSNL was followed by Idea with 2 mbps, Vodafone 1.8 mbps and Airtel with 1.5 mbps.

In upload, all the private sector firm lagged behind BSNL with Vodafone and Idea being the close competitors at 1.1 mbps 3G upload speed. Airtel 3G network recorded an average upload speed of 0.7 mbps, according to the TRAI data.

The average speed is computed by TRAI based on the data it collects across India with the help of its MySpeed application on a real-time basis.