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An independent survey shows mobile LTE networks in many Tier 2 cities are faster than in the metros
LTE—a term loosely used to describe 4G mobile networks—has experienced extraordinary growth in India. Just a year ago we counted ourselves lucky to get a decent 3G connection. Today 4G/LTE has networks have grown five-fold and account for some 23 % of all India traffic—thanks to a few enterprising telecom providers.
But the zippier speeds associated with LTE are not uniformly available.
A study carried out by Twin Prime, an Indian talent -driven leader in mobile app acceleration, based in Redwood California, shows that contrary to assumptions, the performance of mobile networks in the Tier II cities is in no way inferior to that in the 4 metros, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai.
In fact detailed tracking of networks in India showed that the fastest LTE speeds in India were to be had in Pune, averaging 1.2-1.5 MBPS. Mumbai is the slowest among TopTen Indian cities with speeds barely touching 0.8 MBPS. ( see chart).
The study entitled "The State of Mobile Performance Report 2016 H1" also went into individual service providers and found that Airtel is the fastest carrier network. It takes on average 222 milli seconds (ms) to download a 40KB image on LTE over Airtel. Reliance Jio, which launched in 2016, is slightly slower than Airtel, but tops the charts in consistency, which suggests that it provides a more uniform experience for its users. Jio also ranks first in breath of coverage metric, which is expected given that it is a 4G/LTE only network.
Looking at network quality as measured by network response times, Airtel is the best in LTE and HSPA (which is slightly slower than LTE). Reliance is second in LTE with 17ms, BSNL is third with 21ms slower response times. All measurements are for 75% of users.
Jio is the most consistent in performance. This means that faster Jio users experience about 60% better performance than average Jio users. Jio tops in LTE coverage rankings with Idea and Airtel in 2nd and 3rd respectively
In general Indian users are well served: In LTE, Airtel, Reliance and Jio are on top , indicating networks of both high quality and high performance. For HSPA Airtel, Vodafone and Tata Docomo and for 3G Airtel and Tata Docomo. These are the carriers that combine high quality and speed at the same time.
Interestingly, Android devices work 35% faster on LTE and WiFi in India compared go iOS devices. In fact bucking global trends, Cellular data services like LTE are consistently faster than WiFi in India.
Says Kartik Chandrayana, CEO and Co-Founder, Twin Prime: "A significant growth in LTE devices in India is great news for customers looking to experience rich media such as videos. This is a great opportunity and a challenge for India’s booming m-commerce, travel, dating, and other such mobile businesses."
Making sense of the buzzwords...
4G is the fourth generation of wireless mobile telecommunications technology, succeeding 3G.
HSPA or High Speed Packet Access improves the performance of existing 3G networks
LTE stands for “Long Term Evolution” and is used to denote the technology used to attain 4G speeds, theoretically up to 100 MBPS, though in practice less than half of this.
Originally LTE was just for carrying data, and operators had to carry voice by reverting to 2G / 3G systems. This was inefficient.
So along came VoLTE or Voice over LTE, where voice rode piggy back on the data network of LTE. Pretty soon all 4 G networks will be VoLTE networks.