Ookla®, the company behind Speedtest®, today released its report examining the performance of Indian telecom and fixed broadband operators during April-September, 2019.
According to the findings of the report, ACT Fibernet topped the charts in fixed broadband download speeds with speeds between 45.31 and 47.74 Mbps. Fixed broadband speeds in India rose significantly by 16.5% during Q2-Q3 2019 and topped 34.07 Mbps in September across operators.
Hathway was in second place for most of the time period with a top speed of 33.69 Mbps. On further comparing the download speeds for India’s top ISPs, Airtel speeds rose to second place in September with a mean download speed of 34.43 Mbps followed by BSNL and GTPL with speeds hovering between 16.00 and18.47 Mbps for BSNL and between 16.02 and 19.45 Mbps for GTPL.
As per the findings of the report, Jio showed the most variability in speeds from a serious dip down to 17.52 Mbps in August to speeds reaching 41.99 Mbps in September when its new GigaFiber service launched.
Fastest providers in India’s largest cities
On comparing the fixed and mobile download speeds in the 15 largest cities in India, the reports show Jio was the fastest provider for fixed broadband in five of India’s largest cities during Q2-Q3 2019. ACT was the fastest in four and tied in the fifth. Hathway showed the highest Speed Score on fixed broadband in Chennai during Q2-Q3 2019. ACT Fibernet had the highest Speed Score in Jaipur and Lucknow.
However, Airtel was the fastest mobile operator in 11 of India’s largest cities and tied with Jio in a twelfth during Q2-Q3 2019. Airtel’s highest Speed Score was measured in Nagpur whereas Vodafone was the fastest mobile operator in two cities and Idea in one.
Congestion affecting mobile network performance at peak times of day
Ookla analyzed the busiest hours of the day during September 2019 (10:30 am–10:30 pm in local time zones) to see if there was an impact on the top mobile operators’ signal metrics and, ultimately, on speed and throughput for consumers.
This analysis highlights the difference between how networks perform under heavy congestion at peak times (busy hours) and in less busy times of day. Airtel’s busy hour performance was almost as fast as Jio’s performance in the non-busy hours of the day.
Despite having the lowest (7.0%) decrease in speeds during the busiest hours, Jio’s speeds were the slowest during those times, dropping down to 7.87 Mbps. Vodafone and Idea were almost as fast as Airtel, and since the two companies merged, there is a gap in speed difference closing between Airtel and Vodafone.
The report is a result of performance data from over 21 million consumer-initiated tests taken with Speedtest® and coverage data from over 2.5 billion coverage scans on 2.4 million devices during Q2-Q3 2019.
