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Mobile network internet services have grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade, and here’s what’s defining mobile internet in India this year.
Mobile network services have grown in leaps and bounds in India over the past decade. In today's data-driven economy, mobile network connectivity forms the mainstay of an increasing section of our lives. Data from the Department of Telecommunications shows that India has over 84.5 crore telephone service users in the country, with over 81 crore wireless internet users. Mobile network services thus play a vital role in many public digital goods being disseminated among users in the country.
This has led us to find out, through the 91mobiles Mobile Network Speed Test Survey 2023, what the distribution and network capacities of top telecom operators in India are. Here's what we found.
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The overall structure and methodology of the survey are straight-up and are designed to help users find and understand which is the fastest, most used, and most widely distributed telecom operator in mobile network services in the country. Here's how the survey was conducted:
Unsurprisingly, Reliance Jio turns out to be the most popular mobile network telecom provider in the country. Of the sampled user base, 65 percent voted that they are primary users of Reliance Jio, which leads the four telcos in the market with an overwhelming majority.
Bharti Airtel is the largest telecom operator among the rest, with a 25.7 percent market share giving it a sizeable share of the Indian market. Vodafone-Idea, which became a combined entity in August 2018 and was the largest single telco entity at the time, now accounts for only 7.5 percent of the market, as per the 91mobiles mobile network survey. State-run telcos, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), combined accounted for 1.6 percent of the market in our survey.
Reliance Jio recorded the fastest mobile network download speed in our survey, with the fastest survey speed recorded at 2.4Gbps. Bharti Airtel ranked second at 1.2Gbps, marking the two telcos that recorded download speeds at above 1.2Gbps.
BSNL/MTNL recorded the fastest download speed of 110Mbps, while Vi was the slowest at 80Mbps.
Here too, Reliance Jio ranked as the fastest telco offering mobile network connectivity, with an average mobile download speed of 499.2Mbps. It outpaces its nearest competitor, Bharti Airtel, by a mile — the latter registered an average download speed of 140.2Mbps. Vi and the state-run telcos rank much lower, with speeds of 21.2Mbps and 10.9Mbps respectively.
Interestingly, while Jio was the fastest on 5G, Airtel ranked as the fastest on 4G. On 5G, Jio was the fastest with 395.7Mbps, with Airtel second at 278.2Mbps. On 4G, Airtel was the fastest at 25.9Mbps, with Jio second at 21.8Mbps.
Reliance Jio was the fastest telco offering mobile network data connectivity across all four quadrants of India, with Bharti Airtel ranked second in every quadrant too.
Bharti Airtel outpaced Reliance Jio for the fastest recorded upload speed in the mobile network survey — with its upload speed recorded at a peak of 273Mbps. Reliance Jio ranked second at 150Mbps, with both 4G and 5G networks taken into account together. Among the other two, BSNL/MTNL registered the fastest upload speed of 78Mbps, while Vi registered 41Mbps as its peak upload speed.
Jio beat Airtel by a slim margin in terms of the average upload speed within its network, registering 26.3Mbps as its average upload speed with both 4G and 5G networks accounted for. Bharti Airtel ranked second at 20.4Mbps, BSNL/MTNL was third with 12.4Mbps, and Vi ranked at the bottom with a 9.7Mbps average upload speed.
Jio and Airtel maintain a duopoly in terms of upload speeds in east and west circles, with Jio first and Airtel second. In the north circle, BSNL and MTNL users submitted a faster average upload speed than Airtel users, while in the south, Jio registered a lowly third as Airtel topped the chart — followed by BSNL/MTNL.
In terms of the overall mobile network landscape, Reliance Jio pretty much rules the charts, accounting for the following top honours:
Bharti Airtel registered the fastest standalone upload speed among all telcos and ranked second behind Jio on all metrics.
Key takeaways from the region-wise breakdown of the mobile network survey also reveal these interesting statistics: