LTE

There's been a fair bit in the press recently about the decline of Northwest Europe's traditional mobile powerhouses. In particular, leading business groups have singled out Germany and the U.K. as their mobile networks seem to be falling behind the rest of the continent.

Bristol has always been a city of explorers. John Cabot and William Weston set sail from the city on their historic voyages to the New World, while the maritime port enjoys a certain ignominy as the focal point of the British slave trade. But now Bristol is pushing towards new horizons in the mobile sphere, as the U.K.'s fastest city by 4G Download Speed.

Wildly seesawing 4G speeds throughout the day are common in U.S. cities. Over a 24-hour period consumers in major metro areas will often see their 4G Download Speeds drop by 20 Mbps or more as consumer demand increases and networks become more congested. It's not a issue that should be taken lightly. The consistency of our network connections will determine the mobile content and services they are able to support. Developers are forced to design their apps for the slowest speeds seen throughout the day, which is precisely the time most consumers want to use those apps.

This month sees the start of the 6 Nations rugby championship — one of the oldest competitions in the sport featuring the cream of European rugby union. And from the moment these games kick off, there will be millions of fans looking to stream live video feeds and highlights to their mobile phones across the continent. But how many of these fans wanting to see the top tries and tackles will be frustrated by waiting for their mobile videos to load?

OpenSignal has measured 4G download speeds across 20 of India's largest cities and observed that smartphone users experience varying speeds depending on the city they live in: while Navi Mumbai scored 8.1 Mbps in average LTE download speed in our measurements, Allahabad came last with an average of 4.0 Mbps – half the speed.