5G speeds in India impacted, Reliance Jio negatively affected: OpenSignal
India’s 5G subscriber base has grown to 180 million, with the majority on Jio’s 5G network (108 million) and the remaining 72 million on Airtel’s 5G network, the network and analytics firm said.
New Delhi: The rapid deployment of 5G across India is putting pressure on the speed of 5G as more and more users are connecting to the latest mobile network, according to a report by OpenSignal. It said the 5G performance of the country’s top telecom operator Reliance Jio has been negatively impacted compared to rival Bharti Airtel.
“Given the additional load on 5G networks in terms of both number of subscribers and data traffic, it is not surprising that India’s national 5G download speed score dropped from 304Mbps in Q1 2023 to 280.7Mbps in Q4 2023,” Sylvia Kechiche, senior director of industry analysis at OpenSignal, said in a recent report. India’s 5G subscriber base has grown to 180 million, with the majority on Jio’s 5G network (108 million) and the remaining 72 million on Airtel’s 5G network, the network and analytics firm said. GSMA Intelligence estimates that 5G connections will grow further, exceeding 260 million in Q4 2025 and accounting for 22% of all connections. OpenSignal noted that both Jio and Airtel offer commercial 5G services at the same price as 4G, along with unlimited 5G data, which in turn is fuelling data traffic growth.
Jio had previously said that 5G traffic is now reaching close to 30% of mobility data traffic.
OpenSignal cited data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which found that data consumption using 5G grew by 12.6% in Q4 2023, equivalent to 6239 petabytes.