rickenjus
In the zone
Bharti Airtel the largest operator by subscriber base in India has been in the news lately due to its boastful advertising of being the operator with the fastest network in India. Airtel has put up an open challenge where it offers to pay the lifetime bills of anyone who demonstrates a network faster than its own. But in the global perspective where exactly does Airtel stand with its network? and what would be the outcome if it made this claim at the international level?
An independent study of networks conducted by OpenSignal which took into consideration the data obtained by testing 183 individual LTE networks across 68 countries reveals to us the findings for the third quarter of 2015. According to the study India ranks 54th with respect to the average speed of LTE network and Airtel ranks 147th globally with respect to the average download speed which was tested to be just 10 Mbps. In comparison the average 4G speeds in New Zealand are 36 Mbps followed by Singapore at 33 Mbps.
OpenSignal employs their proprietary testing parameter which they call ‘Time coverage’ percentage which measures the percentage of time for which a subscriber is connected to the LTE network. The higher this percentage the more steady a network’s coverage in considered. India ranked 52nd with respect to the time coverage parameter and Airtel ranked 139th globally with just 50% time coverage score. In comparison South Korea ranks first with 97% time coverage followed by Japan with 90% time coverage.
So to conclude, if Airtel had put up this challenge at the global level, they would have had to shell out a massive amount paying the bills of millions of subscribers with better and faster 4G networks across the globe. Now Airtel may in its defense say that it’s not fair to compare its network with those across the globe, since every country has its own regulatory framework and that spectrum assets are more freely available in one country compared to another, We would then like to say it’s equally unfair comparing its own LTE network to the HSPA networks of other operators in India, much like comparing apples to oranges. Wait for the wide scale LTE rollouts by Reliance Jio and Aircel and then put up these network challenges.
*telecomtalk.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/The-State-of-LTE-September-2015-OpenSignal.png
Source - here
An independent study of networks conducted by OpenSignal which took into consideration the data obtained by testing 183 individual LTE networks across 68 countries reveals to us the findings for the third quarter of 2015. According to the study India ranks 54th with respect to the average speed of LTE network and Airtel ranks 147th globally with respect to the average download speed which was tested to be just 10 Mbps. In comparison the average 4G speeds in New Zealand are 36 Mbps followed by Singapore at 33 Mbps.
OpenSignal employs their proprietary testing parameter which they call ‘Time coverage’ percentage which measures the percentage of time for which a subscriber is connected to the LTE network. The higher this percentage the more steady a network’s coverage in considered. India ranked 52nd with respect to the time coverage parameter and Airtel ranked 139th globally with just 50% time coverage score. In comparison South Korea ranks first with 97% time coverage followed by Japan with 90% time coverage.
So to conclude, if Airtel had put up this challenge at the global level, they would have had to shell out a massive amount paying the bills of millions of subscribers with better and faster 4G networks across the globe. Now Airtel may in its defense say that it’s not fair to compare its network with those across the globe, since every country has its own regulatory framework and that spectrum assets are more freely available in one country compared to another, We would then like to say it’s equally unfair comparing its own LTE network to the HSPA networks of other operators in India, much like comparing apples to oranges. Wait for the wide scale LTE rollouts by Reliance Jio and Aircel and then put up these network challenges.
*telecomtalk.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/The-State-of-LTE-September-2015-OpenSignal.png
Source - here
Last edited:
