India has advanced to the 15th spot in the global 4G availability ranking, according to OpenSignal’s State of LTE report. The report states that OpenSignal users were able to connect to 4G LTE network 81.6 percent of the time in the first quarter of 2017 against 71.6 percent in the third quarter of 2016. As a result, India swiftly climbed the ladder to secure the 15th rank.
The sudden leap can be attributed to the widespread adoption of Reliance Jio, which only operates on the 4G network. With over 80 million customers it contributes lion’s share to the number of users using 4G network.
“Most of that improvement can be attributed to a single operator: Reliance Jio. In our most recent India report, we measured Jio’s 4G availability at more than 90%, while the other major operators all fell below 60% availability in our tests,” OpenSignal said in its report.
It further stated: “Ïndia shot up our LTE availability rankings, reflecting a rare instance in which a single operator can have an outsized impact on a mobile market in just a short time.”
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Though the availability is on raise, the average 4G speeds have been plummeting. As Jio is generous to offer 1GB data at just Rs. 11 per GB, users are consuming the data at higher rates congesting the network. As a fallout, 4G speeds are nose diving.
The average LTE download speed in the country stands at 5.1 Mbps, which is slightly more than the global average 3G speed of 4.4 Mbps. While telecom operators claim to provide speeds upto 20 Mbps, the real-time speeds refute those claims.
South Korea maintains its lead by securing the first rank in the 4G availability and second rank in terms of 4G speeds. European countries like Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, and Singapore are top performers in the rankings. The US also advanced to 4th spot from the 10th spot in availability rankings.t
