Airtel offers best video streaming, voice calling experience in April; Jio, Vodafone struggle: Opensignal

With everyone is staying indoors to prevent the spread of coronavirus the dependency on smartphones has increased. This has led to the rise in data consumption as well. People are now streaming more, watching more, listening more and also talking more. Given the scenario the telecom operators are working day and night to offer the best data speed and experience to their users. According to the latest report from Opensignal Airtel has improved its network tremendously in April compared to March to offer a seamless user experience.

The Mobile Network Experience April 2020 report states that Airtel is the best in terms of video experience. It notes that the operator maintained the lead and upgraded its rating from “Fair” to “Good.” Vodafone also follows Airtel in the “Good” rating category. “We recorded the highest increase on its network, as the operator boosted its score to close the gap on the market leader,” the report states. 

This means that both Airtel and Vodafone users are experiencing faster video load times and fewer interruptions during playback while streaming videos on their smartphone using mobile data services.

On the other hand, Reliance Jio and Idea ended up in the Fair rating. A Fair rating is characterized by sluggish load times and frequent stalling, most notably on higher resolutions. The last in the list is BSNL with Poor rating.

Voice app experience

Airtel wins in this category as well. The telecom operator offers slightly better and improved voice app experience than the others as it goes up from a Poor rating to an Acceptable rating. “An Acceptable rating means users are satisfied and generally able to comprehend without repetition.” 

Idea, Jio and Vodafone remained in the Poor rating bracket. This means users of the network will be marred by frequent distortion, clicking sounds or silence experienced during voice calls.

Download speed experience

Vodafone and Idea come out as a winner in this category as well. The overall download speed of Vodafone and Idea grew by a little more than 1.5 Mbps to 9.5 Mbps and 9.2 Mbps, respectively. On the other hand, Airtel’s Download Speed Experience grew by almost half a megabit. 

In this category too Reliance Jio was relatively far behind at 7.3 Mbps while BSNL took the last spot with 2.9 Mbps due to its 3G-only capabilities.

Upload speed experience 

Vodafone wins in this category. The overall upload speed experience score of Vodafone for April is recorded to be 3.9 Mbps. Both Vodafone and Idea continue to have a fairly comfortable lead — nearly 24 per cent faster than Airtel, 42 per cent faster than Jio, and three times faster than BSNL.

Latency experience 

Airtel leads the latency experience category with an average response time of 54.1 milliseconds, Jio, trailed closely behind at 56.3ms, but its user’s average response time worsened by 2.1ms, Opensignal states. In this category Vodafone users observed the highest improvement of 3.6ms to score 60.6ms. 

4G availability 

Jio continues to dominate 4G Availability in India. “The operator once again won the award with a commendable score of 98.2 per cent. Having said that, all three of its rivals are making big strides to close the gap with the leader since our last report.”