OpenSignal: Airtel is the fastest wireless carrier in India

In its first study of the overall wireless market in India, OpenSignal has declared that Airtel is the carrier with the fastest download speeds, on both its 4G and its 3G networks.

OpenSignal said its survey was based on 1.3 billion measurements from 93,464 customers on the major wireless networks between December 2016 and February 2017. It stated that Airtel’s average 4G speeds came in at 11.5 Mbps. In second place was Vodafone at 8.59 Mbps and Idea was in third place with speeds of 8.34 Mbps. Jio was fourth, with speeds down to just 3.92 Mbps.

OpenSignal points out in its report that even though the four main 4G networks are trying their best, the average download speeds in India are still very slow. All of the carriers are well below the current 17.4 Mbps global average for 4G download speeds.

While Jio may have slow 4G speeds, the survey shows that customers were able to get an 4G signal from its network 91.6 percent of the time, which is quite good. Idea was well behind in second place at 59.45 percent, Vodafone was third at 59.05 percent, and Airtel, even though it won the speed race, came in fourth in this category with 54.72 percent.

Vodafone was first with the smallest latency times on its 4G network, at 54.27 ms. Idea was second in 4G, with 61.34 ms latency, followed by Airtel with 63.86 ms and Jio in fourth with 86.61 ms.