There has been a significant improvement in the experiences of 5G users in tier-2 and tier-3 cities of India, says a new report by a data analytics firm specialising in quantifying mobile network experiences, Opensignal. The report mentioned that Kolkata, among all metro circles, has the highest 5G availability in the country.
The report also mentioned that 5G is 12.2 to 26.2 times faster for downloading and that the quality of streaming video is 19.9 to 32.4 per cent higher while the quality of playing games is 14.2 to 44.2 per cent higher on 5G, as compared to 4G.
When it comes to tier-2 cities, Siliguri, Raipur and Surat saw higher download speeds on 5G as compared to 4G, thus, placing them ahead of tier-1 cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad. The highest average 5G download speed was seen in Kolkata at 405.2Mbps followed by Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
“In uplift for video experience, the dominance of tier-2 cities was even stronger, with 80 per cent of the top 20 cities belonging to the tier 2 category,” Hardik Khatri, Data Analyst at Opensignal, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Reliance Jio is ahead of rival Bharti Airtel and it has installed close to 1 lakh telecom towers, 5 times more than Airtel, according to news agency PTI.
Citing the latest daily status report from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) National EMF Portal, the report said that Jio has installed 99,897 BTS (base transceiver station) across 2 frequencies it owns (700 MHz and 3,500 MHz) compared to 22,219 BTS of Bharti Airtel.
Adding to this Jio has 3 cell sites at every base station while Airtel has 2, the report added. More towers and cell sites translate into faster speed. The report also cites an Ookla report which says that Jio's top median speed is 506 Mbps (megabytes per second) as compared to 268 Mbps of Airtel.
According to the report, the majority of telecom circles have seen an increase in 5G performance, with Kolkata recording the fastest median 5G download rates in January 2023 at over 500 Mbps.
"Jio experienced a top median 5G download speed of 506.25 Mbps in Kolkata, while Airtel of 268.89 Mbps in Delhi," it said.
India is the second-largest Internet market in the world, just behind China, with over 500 million users. In October 2022, 5G telecom services were introduced. Airtel and Jio, both have ambitious targets in terms of the 5G network rollout.