Woah! Idea 4G Upload Speed Better Than Jio, Airtel; Jio Tops Download Speeds

In a twist of events, which is mightily surprising for me, as a consumer, Idea Cellular has beaten both Jio and Airtel in the ranking for 4G upload speed.

This ranking has been created by MySpeed App from TRAI, which uses crowdsourced data to rank telecom operators’ mobile broadband speed.

This is surprising for me, as a user of Idea services, as their speed has been on a downhill since last few months. However, it seems that network speed of Idea has improved in some pockets, and and trend is encouraging for everyone.

Will be able to maintain this lead?

TRAI’s MySpeed App: Idea Is #1 In 4G Upload Speed

As per data available in TRAI’s Myspeed app, Idea’s 4G upload speed has been 6.3 Mbps for the month of September, which is the highest among all telcos – Not even Jio and Airtel were able to match this speed.

For the upload speed in 4G category, Vodafone is ranked at #2 with speed of 5.9 Mbps, meanwhile Jio is at #3 with speed of 4.4 Mbps, and Airtel finished last at #4 with speed of 4.3 Mbps.

On the other hand, for download speed in 4G network, Jio has become #1 with average download speed of 18.5 Mbps, meanwhile Vodafone is at #2 with download speed of 10 Mbps.

In this ranking, Idea has performed dismally with average download speed of 9.1 Mbps, while Airtel, which is right now testing and implementing their VoLTE network pan-India has slipped to #4 position, with average download speed of 8.9 Mbps.

Interestingly, around the same time, Idea has released a press statement, stating that they have expanded their network to 2.60 lakh sites across the country, and 50% of their towers are now dedicated for mobile broadband.

Idea has informed that they have added 50,000 broadband sites in the last 12 months, and they have added 5,888 census towns and close to 1.05 lakh villages in their network. As per Idea, they are now reaching 45% of the population.

TRAI’s MySpeed Data: Is Everything Fine?

In the past as well, questions have been raised regarding the genuineness and authenticity of the data shared via MySpeed app from TRAI.

The biggest and most crucial of them all is: How TRAI is gathering the data, and which metrics are being used for calculating the monthly stats.

Due to the rising concerns, TRAI has recently said that they ‘hope’ to release a White paper soon, detailing the algorithms and methodologies used for deriving the ranking via MySpeed app.

This may clear a lot of doubts, regarding the authenticity of the data.

For instance, in March this year, TRAI’s MySpeed app declared that Jio is the fastest mobile network in India, but Ookla results differed drastically.

In that ranking, Idea showed maximum ‘improvement’, but were ranked between #2 and #5 in various Indian cities.

Last year in October, the same report said that Jio has the slowest 4G speed; and in May, it again became the fastest network.

We hope that a clarity comes out, regarding the underlying logic behind TRAI’s MySpeed app, and we get a clearer picture.

If you are an Idea user, then do you agree with TRAI’s report? Do let us know by commenting right here!