Reliance Jio claims to have notched up 16 million users in the first month, much quicker than WhatsApp and Facebook managed. But if things aren’t resolved soon, they risk losing those 16 million users in quick time.
The best and supposedly most reliable speed test provider, Speedtest by Ookla, has publicly stated that Jio 4G speeds over the past month have drastically come down.
The service was officially opened up to users across the country on 5 September, before which many users were using Jio services under the Jio Preview Offer.
It seems adding the 16 million users (as Jio has claimed) over the month has a lot to do with this.
And just to put things in perspective, the Speedtest app has seen tremendous testing activity by Jio users post September.
4G Speeds Not Living Up to the Hype
We have to admit that during the Jio Preview Offer, the Jio 4G speeds were in an average ranging between 20 to 25 Mbps. But nowadays, most people are just content with getting up to 5 Mbps speed.
This report somehow validates what users across India have been complaining about, although their numbers are in stark contrast to what we have experienced. Ambani and Co. have been talking up speeds up to 135 Mbps, but as it turns out, the speeds are nowhere close to that number.
It looks like mean download speeds for 4G capable phones actually decreased 23% month-over-month from 11.31 Mbps to 8.77 Mbps, continuing a downward trend for 2016.Speedtest report
We at The Quint feel that Vodafone 4G delivers better data speeds than Jio 4G right now, and here’s the proof.
While we understand that the Jio service is free right now, Reliance clearly needs to pull up its socks and get things resolved from all corners pronto.
Less We Talk About Calls, The Better
With internet speeds slowing down, what doesn’t also help matters for Reliance are the prolonged issues with voice calling across networks. On an average, we are hardly able to connect with the Airtel, Vodafone or Idea network when calling from Jio.
Consistency is the need of hour for Jio, and that’s clearly lacking right now. The interconnect points have been a long-standing debate in the media, which has even gotten the COAI and TRAI deeply involved.
It’ll be interesting to see if the call issue continues to pose issues for users post the Jio Welcome Offer, which will give the true picture and maybe give us an answer to the problem at hand.
No point boasting about acquiring 16 million users, when they can’t efficiently offer services to the public.
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