When Vodafone India merged with Idea Cellular, the company promised a better network and new technology that would result in improved performance. So has it? We analyzed Speedtest IntelligenceTM data from August 2018 – July 2019 to find out. Because Vodafone and Idea still maintain separate brands, we’ve considered their data separately, but the trends in their performance are similar.
How mobile speeds have changed in India
Speedtest results show that mobile download speeds in India improved on average for all the top mobile operators over the period of August 2018 – July 2019, with Airtel holding onto the title of fastest operator throughout these 12 months.
However, a month-by-month view reveals a more interesting story. After May 2019, mean mobile download speeds for both Airtel and Jio started a decline that continued through July 2019. Meanwhile, Vodafone saw a decline in mean mobile speed from November 2018 through January 2019, after which they recovered to significantly increase download speed to effect a year-over-year improvement of 23.6%. Mobile download speeds on Idea improved in every month except December 2018, for a year-over-year improvement of 51.2%. In comparison, Airtel’s download speed increased 7.7% during the same period and Jio’s download speed went up 10.8%.
Operators meeting the Acceptable Speed Ratio
One measure of a mobile operator’s performance is how consistently they provide speeds at or above 5 Mbps, which is fast enough for consumers to reliably use mobile devices to stream HD video. We call this the Acceptable Speed Ratio (ASR).
Looking at mobile performance in India over the past year, Airtel had the highest ASR in every single month, with an ASR for the year of 70.4%. Despite a dip in January, Vodafone had the second highest ASR throughout the year with an average ASR of 60.3%. Jio held third place for ASR until April 2019, when they were overtaken by a steadily improving Idea. On average, though, Jio ranked third for ASR for the year at 54.5% while Idea’s ASR for the year was 52.5%.
How mobile and fixed broadband speeds compare in India
Looking at India as a whole, mean mobile download speed increased 16.2% in India last year. While this percentage alone may appear strong, it represents an improvement of less than 1.5 Mbps over 12 months. Also worrying, the country’s average mobile download speed declined after May 2019. 5G can’t come soon enough.
Meanwhile, India’s download speed over fixed broadband achieved a 25.3% increase during the past 12 months, a 6.21 Mbps improvement. Jio saw the largest increase in mean download speed over fixed broadband among top providers during the past 12 months with a 120.1% increase. BSNL increased 74.2%, GTPL 32.1%, Airtel 23.8%, YOU Broadband 13.9%, and ACT 12.0%. Hathway’s mean download speed over fixed broadband fell 0.2%. ACT was the fastest provider for each of the 12 months we examined.
India’s global ranking for mobile speeds is falling
Looking at the Speedtest Global IndexTM, India ranks poorly for mobile download speed when compared with neighboring countries and fell further behind throughout the past year. India ranked better for fixed broadband when compared to neighboring countries, though that rank, too, has slipped over the past 12 months. We’ll be interested to see if Jio’s plan to launch fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) in September improves the national average speed for fixed broadband.
Based on mobile download speed and ASR, Vodafone Idea customers are definitely benefitting from last year’s merger. Which is good, because the increase in mobile download speeds in India as a whole was nominal and not keeping pace with the rise in download speed over fixed broadband. Worse, India’s mobile download speed is not keeping up with a general global improvement. We hope continued investments by mobile operators will turn mobile speeds around even before 5G finally launches in India. We’ll continue to watch for increases in performance and to see how the coming FTTH expansion affects India’s fixed broadband speeds.