A study by industry body - IAMAI - says that India is likely to have over 500 million smartphone users by 2022. As the devices ecosystem continues to boom and more users start adopting smartphones, it creates an enormous opportunity for India’s telecom industry.
Telecom companies are now constantly engaged in a race to provide consumers with an excellent experience. The focus is no longer just on just competitive pricing and availability of the network. As mobile usage gets more interactive and immersive, today, telecom companies are attracting consumers with unmatched download speeds, uninterrupted video streaming and low latency internet for faster video loading and lag-free gaming. Opensignal’s latest India Mobile Network Experience Report for April 2019 documents how India’s telecom companies are pulling out all stops to stay ahead of their competitors. The objective is singular – to ensure consumers enjoy a superlative experience on smartphones when using their network.
What Makes the Opensignal Report Significant
Opensignal is regarded as a global standard for measuring network performance and analysing consumer mobile experience. This report ranks mobile networks on different parameters, after examining their performance thoroughly for a period of 90 days. So much so, that the findings are based on over 20 billion measurements, recorded across more than 5 million smartphones. The Opensignal report measures end to end experience and ranks mobile network based on a robust analysis of multiple data points. This is what makes this report a very credible representation of consumers’ experience with different mobile network.
Video Experience & Download Speed – Two Crucial Wins for Airtel
Video streaming remains the biggest use case for mobile internet in India. The choice of content and the convenience of watching videos at any time, has made the Indian consumer extremely fond of streaming entertainment online.
This makes leading in ‘Video Experience’ in the Opensignal report, a crucial win for Airtel, which comfortably outscored other networks. Opensignal took into consideration several factors such as load times, stalling and video resolution to measure the level of video experience. Airtel even managed to outperform the score it registered in the previous Opensignal report from November 2018 by jumping 5 points higher. This could be an indication of the telecom company being more focused on creating valuable experiences for consumers than just fighting the price battle.
Airtel has also, always been the leader in mobile internet speed. That’s perhaps why Opensignal dubbed the telecom network the ‘Maharaja of download speed’. The report ranked Airtel as the fastest network in India with an average speed of 8.7 Mbps, which is almost 40% faster than the next best network. This is after Ookla, another global standard in network speed tests, has been ranking Airtel as a leader in download speed for over two years now.
4G Availability
For consumers, the availability of a strong network is, in many ways, empowering. As 4G network becomes ubiquitous in urban towns, telecom companies are now focusing on rural areas, and more people are becoming a part of the internet ecosystem. As per Opensignal, while Jio currently leads 4G availability in India, the mobile network which has taken giant strides in expanding their 4G presence in the last 6 months is Airtel. The mobile network’s 4G coverage across India has jumped by an impressive 10 percentage points, showing significant signs of growth and stability in the company. This also comes on the back of aggressive investment in in newer technologies like L900 and partnerships with global companies.
Ready for the future
The findings in the Opensignal report are quite a revelation, giving a true sense of customer experience of mobile users in India, and the competitive state of the Indian telecom industry. For now, Airtel stands as the leader in some of the crucial parameters – Download speed and Video streaming experience. Where the industry heads in the future, will be an interesting thing to see.
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