Kolkata tops in 4G availability, much ahead of Delhi, Mumbai
Kolkata, India's City of Joy, has a reason to cheer. It has been crowned the numero uno in the availability of 4G services across 22 telecom circles in the country. It's the only circle "with a hugely impressive LTE availability score of over 90%." With this score, it has also marched ahead of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur, said a report.
Mumbai, Delhi lag behind despite newer infrastructure by telcos
The data has been collated by UK mobile analytics company, OpenSignal, which says Kolkata is followed closely by Punjab at 89.8%, Bihar at 89.2%, Madhya Pradesh at 89.1% and Orissa at 89%. Interestingly, the West Bengal capital is much ahead than Mumbai (86.65%) and Delhi (86.73%), where telecom companies largely deploy their newer infrastructure. Notably, the 90-day study was started in May.
Trend similar to an earlier report on LTE reach analysis
"Many of the top telecom circles for 4G availability were in the East and North of the country, reflecting a similar trend in our analysis of LTE reach in India's cities six months ago," the report said. In the earlier study, it was found that Patna, Kanpur and Allahabad were the top three cities in 4G accessibility. Kolkata was fourth in that study.
This is attributed to Reliance Jio effect: OpenSignal's CEO
OpenSignal's CEO Brendan Gill said this can be attributed to the "Reliance Jio effect," which aggressively rolled out 4G LTE networks, forcing its competitors to do the same. "If there was no Jio, the 4G availability levels wouldn't have been so spectacular," he said.
Download speed: Kolkata ranks third; Navi Mumbai, Chennai top two
The report further said when it comes to download speeds, Kolkata ranks third at 8.46Mbps. Navi Mumbai topped this list for offering 4G speed at 8.72Mbps, Chennai was next at 8.52Mbps. As far as companies are concerned, Airtel offers the maximum 4G download speed at 9.31 Mbps, followed by Idea Cellular (7.27 Mbps), Vodafone (6.98 Mbps), and Reliance Jio (5.13 Mbps).
