Vodafone fastest 4G network in Delhi-NCR: Ookla

New Delhi, Aug 22 (IANS) US-based broadband speed tester Ookla on Thursday said that Vodafone has emerged as the fastest 4G network in Delhi.

As per Ookla's findings, Vodafone SuperNet 4G speeds are the highest as compared to all other operators in Delhi NCR.

Vodafone and Idea's data performance has benefited by their merger and both brands show notable improvement, it said.

"With 10 telecom circles and many parts of Delhi NCR fully integrated, Vodafone Idea customers are experiencing the benefits of a unified and future-ready digital network," said Vishant Vora, CTO, Vodafone Idea.

Vodafone Idea has also completed network integration in East Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad regions.

This Ookla report maps speeds across Indian telecom operators from August 2018 to July 2019.

Vodafone saw a decline in average mobile speed from November 2018 through January 2019, after which they recovered, with speeds rising by a remarkable 23.6 per cent.

Meanwhile, mobile download speeds of Idea improved month-on-month with a year-over-year improvement of 51.2 per cent.

However, on an overall industry front, while mobile download speeds across all mobile operators have improved for the period under analysis, Airtel continued to hold the title of being the fastest operator in the timeframe in question.

While Airtel's download speed increased 7.7 per cent, Jio's download speed went up 10.8 per cent during the same period.

Airtel had the highest Acceptable Speed Ratio (ASR) in every single month, with an ASR for the year of 70.4 per cent. Despite a dip in January, Vodafone had the second highest ASR throughout the year with an average ASR of 60.3 per cent. Jio held third place for ASR with 54.5%.

ASR is a term used to measure a mobile operator's performance on how consistently they are able to provide speeds at or above 5 Mbps, which is fast enough for consumers to reliably use mobile devices to stream HD video, Ookla said in its report.

Looking at India as a whole, average mobile download speeds increased 16.2 per cent last year with an improvement of less than 1.5 Mbps over 12 months. Looking at the Speedtest Global Index, India ranks poorly for mobile download speed when compared with neighbouring countries and fell further behind throughout the past year.

Meanwhile, India's download speed over fixed broadband achieved a 25.3 per cent increase during the past 12 months with 6.21 Mbps improvement, Jio saw the largest increase in average download speed over fixed broadband among top providers with a 120.1 per cent increase.

Increase in other players fixed broadband download speed performance includes BSNL with 74.2 per cent, GTPL with 32.1 per cent, Airtel with 23.8 per cent, YOU Broadband with 13.9 per cent, and ACT with 12.0 per cent respectively. Hathway's average download speed over fixed broadband however fell at 0.2 per cent.