The 5G rollout in India has happened rapidly, thanks to Jio and Airtel’s efficient planning and perfect implementation. It is believed to be the fastest expansion in the world. Tuning to that, the 5G user base has also witnessed exponential growth. While this is good news for telecom networks, there are some expected downgrades too. According to the latest report from OpenSignal, the quality of 5G networks has witnessed a slight decline.
5G network speeds have gone down
- OpenSignal report mentions that average 5G download speeds have significantly come down to 280Mbps from 304Mbps in 2023.
- The drop in speeds is credited to the rapid growth in the user base, due to which the 5G data consumption increased four times during the same period.
- The speeds are said to have decreased during the 9 pm-12 am time.
- Airtel has 20 percent 5G coverage in India, while Jio is leading with a whopping 65 percent of its total coverage area.
- Jio has scaled its 5G coverage by utilising the 700MHz low-band spectrum. This is said to improve the coverage area and have better signal penetration.
- This is the reason why Jio’s average download speeds in India have seen a decline across all circles. The teleco was able to deliver up to 300Mbps speed earlier compared to reduced 250Mbps in most circles.
Airtel has shown some improvements in its 5G speeds. The speeds have gone up from 230Mbps to around 250Mbps across India. However, the peak download speeds are comparatively lower than Jio.
According to TRAI, data consumption using 5G surged to 12.6 percent in Q4 2023, which corresponds to 6239 petabytes. Jio has reported that its 5G traffic is now approaching 30 percent of the mobility data traffic. The number of 5G customers increased to 180 million, with the majority being Jio users (108 million) while Airtel 5G Plus has 72 million.
One main thing to note is that 5G is currently offered free of cost to all users and this is why the data consumption has grown at an exponential rate. Once 5G plans start rolling out, which should happen soon going by the hints by Airtel’s chairman, the quality of the 5G network should become stable as this will bring balance between 4G and 5G users. Vi is currently testing its 5G services in a few circles and is believed to roll out soon.
Beyond the 5G on smartphones, both Jio and Airtel offer FWA services across India. This offers broadband-like internet connectivity. As per the report, the 5G performance in mobile connectivity and FWA broadband is similar.
