Jio has accrued a user base of 125 million within a year of launching operations, a feat of which almost any company would be envious. Of course, this exponential growth is credited to the extremely low-cost data plans and free calls the company has offered to consumers, who have joined the network at a rate of 7 new users per second. However, it seems this growth has come at a cost: slow Internet speeds. Reliance Jio[1] delivers the slowest 4G LTE speeds in India even as it provides the second best "average peak speed," according to a new report by OpenSignal. TRAI's MySpeed app, on the other hand, has consistently ranked the Jio network as the country's fastest 4G network[2].
Jio 4G speed
The report by the London-based OpenSignal, which evaluates the quality of network and their coverage area, claims that even as Reliance Jio's average 4G LTE[3] speed is 3.9Mbps, the average peak speed - when the network is performing at optimal conditions - stands at 50Mbps. The test shows the results between the period December 2016 and February 2017.
OpenSignal[4] reaffirms that most of the time, subscribers are not able to avail the peak speed. But every once in a while, they "stumble onto an incredibly fast connection." OpenSignal said one of the reasons why Reliance Jio's network aren't fully optimised have something to do with just the volume of data people are consuming on its network[5].
4G download speeds: Airtel vs Idea vs Jio vs Vodafone
Photo Credit: OpenSignal
"[...] Heavy usage is bound to tax any network, forcing users to vie against one another for bandwidth. Our data shows that Jio's slow average...