Jio
Jio continues to impress in our 4G Availability analysis, as the operator’s score continues to grow from 96.4% to 96.7% — remarkable in a relatively new LTE market like India. Jio also won our Latency Experience award, although it was Airtel who came top of our 4G-only latency table after edging ahead of Vodafone, who led in this category six months ago.
Airtel
Airtel kept its Download Speed Experience crown, surging further ahead with over 25% growth in our measurements in the past six months. Airtel has traditionally won the lion’s share of OpenSignal’s mobile experience awards, and the operator tied for our top spot in Video Experience and came in second place in our 4G Availability analysis.
Vodafone Idea
Idea won our new Upload Speed Experience category fairly comfortably, averaging speeds of 2.88 Mbps, while it won outright in upload in 10 of India’s regions and drew in a further six. The merger of Vodafone and Idea means India will be paired down to four operators once the companies combine operations. But there is still a lot of potential for growth in the market, and competition remains ierce as Jio continues to disrupt.
The price war subsides
Fierce levels of competition and free data offerings have led to unsustainable drops in mobile revenues and average revenue per users (ARPU) in India, and OpenSignal now expects operators to move towards the tiered paid data models familiar in the rest of the mobile world. As the price war begins to subside in this maturing market, India’s operators should have more breathing space to focus on other ways to differentiate such as service quality and bundling, as opposed to a race to the bottom on price.