Kolkata is popularly known as the City of Joy, after the novel and film of the same name. or centuries the region has been celebrated as India's capital of arts and culture — and now its citizens have yet another reason to be proud, as the metro region has topped OpenSignal's list for 4G availability.
We analyzed our data for 4G availability across all of India's 22 telecoms circles in the 90 days from the start of May 2018, and found Kolkata came top with a hugely impressive score of 90.7%. Indeed, all the other 21 circles saw LTE reach scores over 80% in our measurements — quite remarkable for a country which has only had 4G since 2012.
Kolkata was the only circle in India with a 4G availability score over 90%. But the other top circles were very close behind, with Punjab coming second with 89.8% in this metric, followed by Bihar on 89.2%, Madhya Pradesh with 89.1%, and Orissa on 89%.
Many of the top telecoms circles for 4G availability were in the East and North of the country, reflecting a similar trend in our analysis of LTE reach in India's cities six months ago. Indeed, the city of Kolkata was just outside top three in India's cities, coming fourth behind Patna, Kanpur and Allahabad.
The Indian government has just kicked off the process for a major spectrum auction in the country, which should allow the operators to make further improvements in these highly impressive 4G availability scores. The telecom sector is developing at lighting speed, with operators investing heavily in their 4G networks, while fierce competition has led to several major mobile mergers in the past couple of years. India currently has one of the most exciting and dynamic mobile markets in the world – and we'll continue to track all the developments through our metrics and analysis as they unfold.
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