A report by speedtest company Ookla on the availability of 4G across India, ranked Reliance Jio first with 98.8 per cent 4G availability across the country.

Jio is followed by Airtel at 90 per cent and Vodafone and Idea with 84.6 per cent and 82.8 per cent respectively, across 15 largest cities of India, it said.

As per the report, Airtel had the fastest 4G LTE speed in India during Q3-Q4 2018 with a Speed Score of 11.23 Mbps, followed by Vodafone in second place with a 9.13 Mbps Speed Score and Jio and Idea at the third and fourth position respectively, it said.

“Ultimately, the expansion of 4G availability in India is a win for all mobile customers regardless of their operator. We are excited to see the growth in the Indian mobile market and are eager to see how coverage continues to expand in the coming year,” Doug Suttles, Co-Founder and General Manager at Ookla, said.

According to Ookla’s analysis, 4G availability does not automatically equate to fastest service. To compare which of India’s largest mobile operators is the fastest, Ookla used their proprietary Speed Score methodology, a combined measure of download and upload speed that incorporates several tiers of performance, it said.

On the general availability front, Jio’s general availability was best, with users finding service in 99.3 per cent of locations. Airtel was second at 99.1 per cent, followed closely by Vodafone at 99 per cent and Idea at 98.9 per cent, it said.

“Ookla analysed General Availability and 4G Availability using coverage data from 2,501,38,853 samples on 5,95,034 enabled devices during Q3-Q4 2018,” it said.

General Availability is the percentage of an operator’s known locations where a device has access to any kind of service (including roaming). 4G Availability is then the percentage of an operator’s known locations where a device has access to LTE service (including roaming).

Good availability

The General Availability was good (in the 98-99 per cent range) for India’s largest mobile operators in most of India’s 15 largest cities.

Airtel showed General Availability of 99 per cent or higher in all 15. Jio’s lowest score (in Jaipur) was still high at 98.9 per cent. Vodafone’s only score below 99 per cent was in Kolkata (97.9 per cent).

Idea, on the other hand, showed General Availability scores below 99 per cent in six cities — Hyderabad (98.8 per cent), Delhi (98.3 per cent), Jaipur (98 per cent), Kolkata (97.9 per cent), Visakhapatnam (97.9 per cent) and Indore (96.6 per cent), it added.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO at  Bharti Airtel said, “It is a re-affirmation of our large investments and focus on building the best-in-class mobile network which is preferred by quality customers. As part of ‘Project Leap’, our endeavor to introduce latest technologies like Massive MIMO, 4G Advanced and LAA ahead of the curve have enabled us to deliver a truly differentiated network experience to our customers, and this has been confirmed time and again by various globally renowned speed test platforms”.