CSK fans can cheer about Chennai! The city tops video load time among IPL cities: Opensignal report

Fresh out of its mobile analytics research lab, Opensignal brought out one of the most interesting new analysis on the video load time in India’s IPL cities. As the IPL comes to a close this month, and millions of Indian cricket fans would be watching the finals on their smartphones, Opensignal saw a great opportunity to do some analysis related to this. The company's research shows the best IPL city in India to stream the highlights of all the runs and wickets is Chennai.

Opensignal ranked India's biggest cities based on 4G Video Load Time, which measures the average time taken for a mobile video to load and for the picture to start moving. So! the shorter the Video Load Time, the better — especially when you can't wait to see that great six from Dhoni or Chahar's latest wicket.

Chennai, according to the findings, is the king of 4G Video Load Time among the eight IPL cities with an average of 6.0 seconds. Kolkata rode in second with an average time of 6.2 seconds, followed by Hyderabad which shone in third with 6.4 seconds. Bangalore and Chandigarh, home of the Kings XI Punjab, just scored under the 7-second mark, with Mumbai, Delhi, and Jaipur bringing up the tail.

“The 2019 season of the Indian Premier League comes to a close this month, as millions of cricket fans across the globe will be glued to their screens to see which team comes out victorious. But in the age of smartphones and with 4G becoming increasingly ubiquitous across India, where's the best place to stream highlights of all the runs and wickets among the IPL cities? It is Chennai,” reads the report brief.

Revealing more, Opensignal says that to do the report, 50 of India's biggest cities were analyzed and were ranked based on 4G Video Load Time. Another interesting fact revealed was that Chennai alone wasn't the best city in the whole of India for loading video on a smartphone. Of the 50 cities analyzed, Thiruvananthapuram came top with an average 4G Video Load Time of just 5.8 seconds, pushing Chennai into second place. The majority of the cities measured were batting fairly middle-order in the 6-7 seconds range, while two metros — Vasai-Virar and Kota — were stumped with 4G Video Load Time scores over 8 seconds.

As mobile habits change and big data bundles become more affordable, millions of Indians are turning to their smartphones as their main way of watching a video. Bollywood music channel T-Series recently became the first channel on YouTube to pass 100 million subscribers, knocking gaming sensation PewDiePie off the top spot. And India's mobile operators are increasingly looking to content deals to differentiate their services, as the unsustainable price war of recent years eases.

Opensignal's latest report found India's Video Experience is moving in the right direction, as all four of the country's key 4G operators scored a Fair rating — an improvement on the Poor ranking they received when OpenSignal first analyzed the Video Experience in the country six months ago.

However, even a Fair rating means load times are sluggish; stops and stutters mid-stream are common and connections often have trouble coping with higher-resolution formats. The mobile Video Experience in India is getting better, but there is still an awful lot of room for improvement, briefs the report.