India’s 4G
download speeds are slower than that of Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Myanmar
4G
is the talk of the town, but buffering is still a reality in India! The average
4G LTE data speed in India has remained static for more than a year — at about
6.1Mbps — which is almost a third of the global average of about 17 Mbps,
making it among the slowest countries on this metric.
Even
as the big telcos step up 4G deployment, brace for 5G and talk of offering
fibre-based home broadband at starting speeds of 100 Mbps soon, however its
still not working well.
India’s
4G download speeds are even slower than that of neighbours Sri Lanka (13.95
Mbps), Pakistan (13.56 Mbps) and Myanmar (15.56 Mbps), according to UK speed
tester OpenSignal. They are much lower than developed markets such as the US
(16.31 Mbps), UK (23.11Mbps) and Japan (25.39 Mbps).
US
data speed tester Ookla has ranked India 109th — almost at the bottom in its
list of 124 nations — on overall mobile internet speeds, with an average
download speed of 9.12 Mbps, which is way below the 23.54 Mbps global average.
Ookla’s mobile internet speed test results for any country include measurements
of various networks — 2G, 3G and 4G.
OpenSignal
analyst reports that the comparatively slower speeds in India are due to the astronomical
growth in terms of smartphone penetration in India, with millions of new users
connecting to its mobile networks every month.
According
to Ookla the another possible reason behind India’s slower mobile internet
speeds is the challenge of serving an extremely dense population.
With
more people using the internet at any given time, network congestion can
certainly be a factor. Experts asserts that the country’s 4G speeds also hinge
on how much spectrum is devoted to LTE, whether it has adopted new 4G
technologies like LTE Advanced, how densely networks are built and congestion
levels.
Further,
the frequent shutting down of internet across the country by law enforcement
agencies, challenges in securing permissions to install vital telecom
infrastructure and even undue tower shutdowns by municipal bodies.
According
to Telecom Companies in India, the current pricing and generous quantum of data
on packs offered by telcos, amid continuing price wars, are “probably a lot
more than what present networks are designed to handle, which can spoil
customer 4G experience in terms of speeds and pervasiveness.
Another
possible reason is that barring Jio, which is the sole pure 4G player, big
telcos continue to run multiple mobile technologies. Accordingly, most networks,
are not offering contiguous 4G coverage, which is why, mobile signals can drop
off from 4G to 3G to 2G to fill the 4G gaps that, in turn, can impact speeds
and experience.
Some
analysts partly ascribed the phenomenon to higher latency levels of Indian
telcos. Latency is a measure of the delay that users experience when their
computers/smartphones try to access internet servers.
In
India, Vodafone had the lowest latency in our measurements, with a response
time of 66.4 milliseconds, but that’s still relatively high as most operators
around the world tend to fall within a range of 30-50 milliseconds.
Lower
latency connections typically mean webpages load faster and videos start
playing sooner. The telcos are stepping up site capacity and investing in advanced
technologies to boost 4G speeds.
Bharti Airtel and
Vodafone India are deploying pre-5G Massive Mimo technology, which is slated to
boost network capacity by 5-7 times over the existing spectrum resources.
Airtel
has already invested in carrier aggregation technology, while Idea is in the
process of doing so. The technology allows carriers to use different spectrum
bands on the same network and key benefits are low latency levels and a 50% cut
in delays between click and download.
The
spectrum per operator in India is low compared to other countries, which
affects 4G network speeds. The
Spectrum per subscriber also remained
comparatively low, due to high population.
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