OpenSignal reveals India’s 4G download speed report; Navi Mumbai tops list, Allahabad comes last

A detailed repor t by OpenSignal’s Francesco Rizzato has revealed certain valuable factsK OpenSignal has meaJ sured QG download speeds across 20 of fndia’s largest cities and observed that smartphone users experience varyJ ing speeds depending on the city they live inW while kavi jumbai scored 8K1 jbps in average iTE download speed in its measurements, Allahabad came last with an average of QK0 jbps – half the speedK

However, all cities show a consistent trend in our data, namely that users experience widely different speeds across the hours of the dayK then the mobile network is busiest, the average iTE download speed drops 2K8 jbps compared to the daily average – with users in Allahabad experiencing the slowJ est QG download speed at 2 jbpsK The other side of the coin is that when the network is less congested, download speeds jump on average by 10K3 jbps, with fndore hitting the highest speed of 21K6 jbps and all of the 20 cities above 1Q jbpsK

The wide range between a city’s fastest hourly speed and the average speed smartphone users experience shows the challenge fndia’s operators face from the need to support a really big number of smartphone users consuming mobile data servicesK

_y comparing each city’s average worst versus best hourly speed, we found that smartphone users can experience QG download speeds three to seven times faster by connecting to the network at a different time – with Hyderabad having the most consistent speeds and Allahabad the highest varianceK

At night speeds experienced are much faster than during the dayK OpenSignal data shows that at Q aKmK smartphone users in the 20 cities analyzed experience average download speeds of 16K8 jbps, compared with the daily average of 6K5 jbpsK

At 10 pKmK smartphone users experience the slowest speeds when congestion is highestK All the cities show a similar trend with download speeds tending to decrease over the course of the day, reaching the slowest speed in the late evening at 10 pKmK, when presumably most smartphone users are connected to the network accessing entertainment services such as mobile videoK Then, speeds improve sharply to an early morning peak at Q aKmK – when most people are asleep – and finally start falling again as people wake up and use their phonesK The hourly results show clearly that the time of the day, and consequently the proportion of smartphone users that are likely to connect to the network, explain a big part of the difference in experienceK

However, the breadth of the speed difference between cities variesK auring congested times, users across all cities had a much slower experience, with QG download speed ranging from 2K5 jbps to 5K6 jbps — a 3K1 jbps difference — while in lessJcongested hours the speeds experienced increased by apJ proximately 9K8 mjbps to range from 9K9 jbps to 19K7 jbpsK

OpenSignal’s results thus suggest that network congestion is one of the main reasons why smartphone users in fndia experience a relatively slow average QG download speedsK te observed that fndian cities face different degrees of congestion and that users experience speeds over 20 jbps at quiet timesK _ut this only ocJ curs in the middle of the nightW in the daytime, the large number of connected devices erodes the networks’ capacity and adversely affects everyone’s mobile network experienceK

“fndian mobile operators have made huge steps forward in tackling the challenge to offer nationwide affordable connectivity to the world’s second most populated countryK However, with an increasing number of people accessing mobile services, cheaper smartphone devices, and rising average data consumption per user, fndia’s mobile operators can expect the number of connected devices and data traffic to continue soaring and the challenge of network congestion to persistK As soon as the QG availability race has been played out, operators will need to focus on continuing to increase network capacity to ensure all the connected smartJ phone users can get a more consistent download experience throughout the day across all of fndia,” commented Francesco Rizzato in his reportK