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In the previous report we saw the majority of the operators move into the Fair Video rating category and in six months, two operators — Airtel and Vodafone — have upgraded their ratings from Fair (40-55) to Good (55-65). Meanwhile, Airtel won our Video Experience award once again, as our users on its network continue to enjoy the best Video Experience nationally. With mobile video consumption rising, Video Experience is increasingly becoming an important aspect of users’ mobile network experience and at present Airtel holds an advantage.
There was fierce competition between four key operators for the Voice App Experience award, but Airtel emerged as the winner with 75.5 points. Our users on its network now perceive an Acceptable Voice App Experience (74-80) while using OTT voice services on apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc. However, Vodafone, Idea and Jio landed in our Poor rating bracket, and BSNL ended up in Very Poor.
Once again Airtel claimed the Download Speed Award with an average speed of 10.1 Mbps, and while we have not recorded a large increase in its score since the last report, Vodafone and Idea are closing the gap. Users on both are roughly one Mbps away from challenging the experience Airtel users enjoy in first place.
Vodafone won the award in this category and continued to dominate Upload Speed Experience nationally with a score of 3.9 Mbps. Vodafone and Idea had an edge over their rivals in the average upload speed of their users. Both clocked speeds that were more than 23% faster than Airtel, 42% faster than Jio, and more than four times faster than BSNL. We saw users’ Upload Speed Experience grow across the board, with the exception of BSNL.
Airtel also won our Latency Experience award in India, bringing its total awards count to four for this reporting period. The operator took over Jio with a score of 54.1 milliseconds compared with the 56.3ms experienced by our users on Jio’s network. Over the last six months Airtel’s users’ response time reduced by 3.1ms, while Jio's score increased slightly by 2.1ms, allowing Airtel to win this award for the first time. That said, Latency Experience across all five of the operators that we have covered in this report still has a long way to go before it reaches the sub-40ms levels we see in many developed markets.
Jio continues to increase its already spectacular 4G Availability score. The operator's score has grown by less than half a percentage point, to reach a remarkable 98.2% since our last report. But Airtel, Vodafone and Idea all saw bigger improvements in 4G Availability to close the gap on Jio. However, Jio also won our new 4G Coverage Experience award with a score of 9.2 points (on a scale of 0-10).
With close to 1.15 billion unique wireless subscribers, India is one of the largest mobile markets globally. It is going through a rapid transition with accelerated migration to 4G services and smartphones, which has led to a sharp rise in mobile data consumption. This primarily was initiated by the disruptive entry of 4G-only operator, Jio. Over the years this change has transformed the dynamics of the Indian mobile market completely, especially in terms of mobile network experience.
Over the last few reports we have seen that operators are now finding new ways to differentiate their services rather than undercutting each other, a strategy that was prevalent in the Indian mobile industry before 2016. The operators are now focused on growing their 4G subscriber bases by building up coverage and capacity. The two incumbent operators Airtel and Vodafone Idea have been deploying technologies deploying technologies such as Dynamic Spectrum Re-farming (DSR), spectrum re-farming from 3G to 4G, M-MIMO, L900, TDD and small cells to close the existing 4G gap with Jio. We can see some notable changes in our measurements as a result of these initiatives.
For this report, we continue to treat Vodafone and Idea as individual operators, as they are still operating as separate consumer brands, and we have included BSNL as a 3G-only operator. We have examined the mobile network experience of the five main mobile network operators in India: Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Jio and Vodafone, over a period of 90 days beginning December 1, 2019 to see how they fared, and further delved deeper into 48 of India's largest cities, comparing the experience users received on these five operators.
| Mobile Experience Awards India | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
April 2020,
India Report
|
V
Vodafone
|
A
Airtel
|
I
Idea
|
J
Jio
|
B
BSNL
|
Video Experience
| |||||
Voice App Experience
| |||||
Download Speed Experience
| |||||
Upload Speed Experience
| |||||
Latency Experience
| |||||
4G Availability
| |||||
4G Coverage Experience
| |||||
|
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
|
April 2020,
India
|
|---|---|
|
Video Experience
|
A
Airtel
|
|
Voice App Experience
|
A
Airtel
|
|
Download Speed Experience
|
A
Airtel
|
|
Upload Speed Experience
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Latency Experience
|
A
Airtel
|
|
4G Availability
|
J
Jio
|
|
4G Coverage Experience
|
J
Jio
|
With smartphones becoming the primary screen, and wireless internet the preferred mode to access content, the shift in video consumption habits has become very pronounced across the country, putting Indian operators in the prime position to provide consumers with quality video streaming services as the demand continues to grow. That said, let us see how the operators stack up in our Video Experience metric, which measures video quality streamed over mobile networks to devices on a 100-point scale, taking video load time, stalling rates and picture resolution into account.
|
Video Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Vodafone
|
A
Airtel
|
I
Idea
|
J
Jio
|
B
BSNL
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | |||||
|
4G Video Experience
| 61.2 (± 0.11) | 59.6 (± 0.06) | 56.7 (± 0.12) | 53.0 (± 0.05) | — |
|
3G Video Experience
| 34.1 (± 0.43) | 33.3 (± 0.63) | 32.7 (± 0.43) | — | 34.9 (± 0.38) |
| 4G Video Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
V
Vodafone
|
61 (± 0.11) |
|
A
Airtel
|
60 (± 0.06) |
|
I
Idea
|
57 (± 0.12) |
|
J
Jio
|
53 (± 0.05) |
|
B
BSNL
|
— |
| 3G Video Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
V
Vodafone
|
34 (± 0.43) |
|
A
Airtel
|
33 (± 0.63) |
|
I
Idea
|
33 (± 0.43) |
|
J
Jio
|
— |
|
B
BSNL
|
35 (± 0.38) |
Our users continue to enjoy the best Video Experience on Airtel’s network. The operator maintained its lead with a score of 58.9 points — an improvement of 5.9 points in the last six months that upgraded Airtel’s rating from Fair (40-55) to Good (55-65). In second place, with a score of 56.5 points, Vodafone also joined Airtel in the Good rating category. We recorded the highest increase on its network, as the operator boosted its score by 8.3 points to close the gap on the market leader. This means that users on both these networks now experience faster video load times and fewer interruptions during playback while streaming videos on their smartphone using mobile data services.
We also observed significant increments on Jio and Idea as they came toe-to-toe with scores of 53 and 52.8 points, respectively, and ended up in the Fair ratings category. A Fair rating is characterized by sluggish load times and frequent stalling, most notably on higher resolutions. Meanwhile, the Video Experience observed by users on the 3G-only network, BSNL, remained in the Poor category (under 40) and they have seen an increase of just over three points since our previous report.
In Voice App Experience, we saw tight competition between four key operators, with less than 3 points (out of 100) separating them. Airtel was slightly ahead of the pack with 75.5 points and won the award in this category by boosting its score by 3.4 points in the last six months. That increase was good enough to push it from a Poor rating (66-74) into an Acceptable rating (74-80), and to overtake Vodafone for first place. An Acceptable rating means users are satisfied and generally able to comprehend without repetition.
|
Voice App Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Vodafone
|
A
Airtel
|
I
Idea
|
J
Jio
|
B
BSNL
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | |||||
|
4G Voice App Experience
| 75.2 (± 0.05) | 75.8 (± 0.03) | 76.3 (± 0.06) | 73.6 (± 0.03) | — |
|
3G Voice App Experience
| 63.8 (± 0.17) | 62.9 (± 0.29) | 65.0 (± 0.21) | — | 67.9 (± 0.19) |
| 4G Voice App Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
V
Vodafone
|
75 (± 0.05) |
|
A
Airtel
|
76 (± 0.03) |
|
I
Idea
|
76 (± 0.06) |
|
J
Jio
|
74 (± 0.03) |
|
B
BSNL
|
— |
| 3G Voice App Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
V
Vodafone
|
64 (± 0.17) |
|
A
Airtel
|
63 (± 0.29) |
|
I
Idea
|
65 (± 0.21) |
|
J
Jio
|
— |
|
B
BSNL
|
68 (± 0.19) |
Idea, Jio and Vodafone remained in the Poor rating bracket with scores of 74.4, 73.6, and 73.2 points, respectively. This means that our users' Voice App Experience on these networks will be marred by frequent distortion, clicking sounds or silence experienced during the call. However, we recorded a significant improvement among users on BSNL’s network: the operator increased its score by more than 10% and elevated its rating from Very Poor (60-66) to Poor (66-74).
Opensignal’s Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc. The measure uses a model derived from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-based approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters. This model characterizes the exact relationship between the technical measurements and perceived call quality.
Airtel once again won our Download Speed Experience award, but rivals Vodafone and Idea have begun whittling away at its sizable lead. Vodafone and Idea’s overall download speeds grew by a little more than 1.5 Mbps to 9.5 Mbps and 9.2 Mbps, respectively, since our last report, while Airtel’s Download Speed Experience grew by almost half a megabit. Airtel still has a slight lead in Download Speed Experience with speeds averaging 10.1 Mbps, but if this trend in download speed growth continues, Airtel will soon be challenged by one of its rivals for this metric. On the other hand, Jio was relatively far behind at 7.3 Mbps, and BSNL took the last spot with 2.9 Mbps due to its 3G-only capabilities.
|
Download Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Vodafone
|
A
Airtel
|
I
Idea
|
J
Jio
|
B
BSNL
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | |||||
|
4G Download Speed
| 10.8 (± 0.03) | 10.3 (± 0.02) | 10.3 (± 0.03) | 7.3 (± 0.01) | — |
|
3G Download Speed
| 3.1 (± 0.02) | 2.8 (± 0.03) | 3.1 (± 0.02) | — | 2.9 (± 0.02) |
| 4G Download Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Vodafone
|
11 (± 0.03) |
|
A
Airtel
|
10 (± 0.02) |
|
I
Idea
|
10 (± 0.03) |
|
J
Jio
|
7 (± 0.01) |
|
B
BSNL
|
— |
| 3G Download Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Vodafone
|
3 (± 0.02) |
|
A
Airtel
|
3 (± 0.03) |
|
I
Idea
|
3 (± 0.02) |
|
J
Jio
|
— |
|
B
BSNL
|
3 (± 0.02) |
When we look at Download Speed Experience by technology, the 4G Download Speeds of users on three operators — Airtel, Vodafone and Idea — were on par with one another. We also saw the same trend in 3G Download Speed, where Airtel, BSNL, Idea, and Vodafone were on par with one another.
Vodafone won the award in this category with an overall Upload Speed Experience score of 3.9 Mbps. Both Vodafone and Idea continue to have a fairly comfortable lead — nearly 24% faster than Airtel, 42% faster than Jio, and three times faster than BSNL. We saw Upload Speed Experience grow across the board, with BSNL being the only exception. Our users saw the largest increase on Vodafone’s network (25.1%), followed by Airtel (24.1%), Jio (23.7%) and Idea (13.4%) since the last report.
|
Upload Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Vodafone
|
A
Airtel
|
I
Idea
|
J
Jio
|
B
BSNL
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | |||||
|
4G Upload Speed
| 4.5 (± 0.02) | 3.0 (± 0.01) | 4.2 (± 0.02) | 2.6 (± 0.01) | — |
|
3G Upload Speed
| 1.0 (± 0.01) | 0.7 (± 0.01) | 1.0 (± 0.01) | — | 0.9 (± 0.01) |
| 4G Upload Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Vodafone
|
4 (± 0.02) |
|
A
Airtel
|
3 (± 0.01) |
|
I
Idea
|
4 (± 0.02) |
|
J
Jio
|
3 (± 0.01) |
|
B
BSNL
|
— |
| 3G Upload Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Vodafone
|
1 (± 0.01) |
|
A
Airtel
|
1 (± 0.01) |
|
I
Idea
|
1 (± 0.01) |
|
J
Jio
|
— |
|
B
BSNL
|
1 (± 0.01) |
The national results were also reflected in our 4G Upload Speed sub-metric — unlike in the 3G Upload Speed category, where Vodafone, Idea and BSNL were statistically tied.
Upload speed is becoming increasingly important in mobile services, as social media, social sharing and video chat apps become more widely used. Mobile users are moving away from content consumption to content creation, which gives operators with the fastest upload speeds a distinct advantage.
We have a new winner in this category: Airtel won our Latency Experience award with an average response time of 54.1 milliseconds — 3.1ms quicker than in the last report — while our ex-winner in this category, Jio, trailed closely behind at 56.3ms, but its users' average response time worsened by 2.1ms since our last report. That said, our Vodafone users observed the highest improvement of 3.6ms to score 60.6ms.
|
Latency Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Vodafone
|
A
Airtel
|
I
Idea
|
J
Jio
|
B
BSNL
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in ms | |||||
|
4G Latency
| 57.5 (± 0.08) | 53.4 (± 0.04) | 70.5 (± 0.11) | 56.3 (± 0.03) | — |
|
3G Latency
| 75.2 (± 0.27) | 79.1 (± 0.42) | 86.7 (± 0.34) | — | 85.5 (± 0.35) |
| 4G Latency | in ms |
|
V
Vodafone
|
57 (± 0.08) |
|
A
Airtel
|
53 (± 0.04) |
|
I
Idea
|
70 (± 0.11) |
|
J
Jio
|
56 (± 0.03) |
|
B
BSNL
|
— |
| 3G Latency | in ms |
|
V
Vodafone
|
75 (± 0.27) |
|
A
Airtel
|
79 (± 0.42) |
|
I
Idea
|
87 (± 0.34) |
|
J
Jio
|
— |
|
B
BSNL
|
86 (± 0.35) |
Latency Experience measures the response time of a network (the lower the score the better), and it is a key factor in determining how real-time communications and gaming applications perform on mobile connections. As seen from the real-world data, Indian operators have room for improvement, especially Idea and BSNL, whose Latency Experience scores are above 70ms.
Jio continues to dominate 4G Availability in India. The operator once again won the award with a commendable score of 98.2%, and considering there is a limited head space for improvement it is remarkable that Jio’s score grew by 0.4 percentage points in the last six months. Having said that, all three of its rivals are making big strides to close the gap with the leader since our last report. While Airtel's 4G Availability score has jumped by six percentage points to reach an impressive 94.5%, our users saw the highest growth of 6.4 percentage points on Idea’s network, followed by 5.8 percentage points on Vodafone’s network. Both Idea and Vodafone surpassed the 80% milestone with 83.8% and 82.6% 4G Availability, respectively.
Jio also won our inaugural 4G Coverage Experience award in India, with a score of 9.2 points (on a scale of 0-10), while Airtel finished second with 6.8 points. Both Idea and Vodafone were further behind with 4.5 and 4 points, respectively.
Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how our mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-10, it analyzes the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by Opensignal users of all network operators.
In our regional breakdown, we delved deeper to analyze 48 of India’s largest cities on six of our primary metrics. In 4G Availability, Jio continued to dominate by winning undisputedly in all 48 cities, with our users enjoying the highest 4G Availability of 99% in Rajkot. This means that our users in the city, on average, were connected to its 4G network a remarkable 99% of the time. In addition to this, our users on Jio’s network observed 4G Availability of at least 98% in 39 other cities and at least 97% in the remaining eight cities. Moving on to Airtel, it was noteworthy that we saw the operator’s score grow in every single city since the last report. Our users on Airtel’s network now experience more than 90% 4G Availability in all 48 cities, and the highest in Ahmedabad with 97.8%. If the operator continues to grow its connectivity at this pace, it will soon be able to catch up with Jio. That said, users now observe at least 90% 4G Availability in nine cities on Idea’s network, and in four cities on Vodafone’s network, with the highest score in Ahmedabad on both the networks — 92.2% on average.
Looking at Video Experience, in line with the national results, Airtel continued to lead at the city-level as well. Our users on its network enjoyed a Good Video Experience in 35 cities, and a Very Good Experience in Vadodara and Nagpur. In fact, in our recent analysis we had also seen Vadodara top in Video Experience aggregated across all operators. Looking at other operators, users on Vodafone’s network enjoyed a Good Video Experience in 25 cities, and a Very Good Experience in six cities, with those in Raipur experiencing the highest overall score with 69.1 points.
We saw a fierce competition between key operators — Airtel, Jio, Vodafone and Idea — in our Voice App Experience category. But Airtel triumphed in this category by winning undisputedly in 17 cities and drawing in a further 21 cities. Our users on Airtel’s network perceived the best Voice App Experience across all cities and operators in Vadodara with a score of 80.7 points. The operator earned an Acceptable Voice App Experience rating in Vadodara along with 34 other cities.
Turning to our speed metrics, in the overall Download Speed Experience category Airtel won 14 awards outright and drew in a further nine cities, while Vodafone and Idea came close to challenging it in several cities, including Vadodara, Meerut, Rajkot, Ranchi and Pimpri-Chinchwad, where we saw a three-way split. Having said that, our users, on average, continue to enjoy the fastest Download speed Experience of 15.2 Mbps in Thiruvananthapuram on Vodafone's network — an increase of almost 2 Mbps since our last report. Vodafone also bagged a handful of awards by winning in 11 cities out right and tieing in 22.
In Upload Speed Experience, once again the majority of the awards were spread between Airtel and Vodafone, followed by Jio and lastly Idea. Vodafone won outright in 10 cities and drew in a further 21 cities. Our users on average experienced the fastest Upload Speed of 7.9 Mbps on Vodafone’s network in Guwahati.
In terms of network responsiveness, we saw a close call between Airtel and Jio. While Airtel was the outright winner in 18 cities, and drew in a further three cities, Jio single-handedly won in 20 cities and drew in a further two cities. Our users on Airtel clocked the fastest Latency Experience of 37.6ms in Faridabad, which is quite a remarkable result. In the last report we saw that the Indian mobile market was beginning to improve, and in this report we have started to see these improvements picking up pace as our users continue to see notable improvements in their mobile network experience.
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