India is Having Slowest 4G LTE Speed Among 88 Countries Found in Survey Conducted by OpenSignal

                  While we wait for 5G networks to make our internet faster, 4G is the most recent breakthrough in the telecom communication that people can take leverage. With blazing fast connection speeds, it has allowed people who could hardly load a YouTube video stream content in 4K.

The increasing quickness of the 4G networks might have come to a halt. According to the State of LTE February report by OpenSignal, mobile carriers across the globe have been unable to take their average 4G speeds past the 50 Mbps mark. The report includes over 50 billion measurements received from more than 4.8 million devices worldwide in Q4 2017.

      According to a list prepared by mobile analytics company OpenSignal, 4G download speed in India is the slowest across 88 countries spanning six continents. This is despite the fact that 4G has been expanding at a rapid pace across the country, and networks are being upgraded from slower 2G services.

On an average, the 4G speed in India has been measured at 6 Mbps (actual experience could be much lower), whereas subscribers in neighbouring Pakistan enjoy internet at a more than double speed of 14 Mbps. Algeria is ranked second-last at 9 Mbps.

According to OpenSignal, subscribers in Singapore get the fastest downloads on 4G at 44 Mbps, followed by the Netherlands at 42 Mbps. In Norway, the 4G download speed is 41 Mbps, while South Korea gets 40 Mbps. OpenSignal analysed more than 5,000 crore measurements (collected between October 1 and December 29 of 2017) of speed from over 38 lakh smartphone and tablet users across six continents. 

Giving out reasons for a slower network speed in India despite a wider 4G reach, the study blamed capacity constraints on the network. Though 4G is available for around 86% of the time people access the internet, “4G networks lack the capacity to deliver connection speed much faster than 3G”, it said.

Concerns over poor service and slower speed have also been raised by the government, as it has started offering a variety of services online and is pushing digital payments in a big way.

Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan has said the government is mindful of the slow internet speed experienced by internet users in many parts of the country.

Rajan Mathews, DG of industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, said it is wrong to blame telecom companies for poor services. “Average spectrum holding by companies in India is around 26 MHz compared to 50 MHz across top economies.” Also, he said telecom companies face problems in laying optical fibre as well as deploying towers.

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