OpenSignal says Airtel offers the best video quality experience on mobile, Vodafone catches up

The report finds that India's leading network service provider Airtel continues to lead as Video Experience improves in India. The operator maintained its lead and upgraded its rating from Fair (40-55) to Good (55-65). In its previous report, the firm found that the majority of the operators moved into the Fair Video rating category and in six months from then, two operators — Airtel and Vodafone — have upgraded their ratings.  This means that users on both these networks now experience faster video load times and fewer interruptions during playback while streaming videos on their smartphones using mobile data services.

Opensignal says that Vodafone has joined Airtel in the Good rating category. "We recorded the highest increase on its network, as the operator boosted its score to close the gap on the market leader," reads the report.

The report also found that Jio and Idea as they came toe-to-toe, and ended up in the Fair rating category. A Fair rating is characterized by sluggish load times and frequent stalling, most notably on higher resolutions. Meanwhile, the Video Experience observed by users on the 3G-only network, BSNL, remained in the Poor category.

In the Voice App Experience, Opensignal had observed a tight competition between four key operators. Airtel was slightly ahead of the pack and won the award in this category. The operator boosted its score to push it from a Poor rating into an Acceptable rating, and to overtake Vodafone for first place. An Acceptable rating means that users are satisfied and generally able to comprehend without repetition.  Idea, Jio, and Vodafone remained in the Poor rating bracket, observes Opensignal. This means that users' Voice App Experience on these networks will be marred by frequent distortion, clicking sounds or silence experienced during the call.

Opensignal’s Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc.

Opensignal has yet another finding. Airtel once again won the Download Speed Experience award but rivals Vodafone and Idea have begun whittling away at its sizable lead. Vodafone and Idea’s overall download speeds grew by a little more than 1.5 Mbps to 9.5 Mbps and 9.2 Mbps, respectively, since the last report, while Airtel’s Download Speed Experience grew by almost half a megabit. Airtel still has a slight lead, but if this trend in download speed growth continues, Airtel will soon be challenged by one of its rivals for this metric. On the other hand, Jio was relatively far behind at 7.3 Mbps, and BSNL took the last spot with 2.9 Mbps due to its 3G-only capabilities

Surprisingly, Vodafone won the award in the overall Upload Speed Experience with a score of 3.9 Mbps. Both Vodafone and Idea continue to have a fairly comfortable lead — nearly 24% faster than Airtel, 42% faster than Jio, and three times faster than BSNL. Upload speed is becoming increasingly important in mobile services, as social media, social sharing, and video chat apps become more widely used. Mobile users are moving away from content consumption to content creation, which gives operators with the fastest upload speeds a distinct advantage.

In terms of Latency Experience, Airtel bags the award with an average response time of 54.1 milliseconds, while the ex-winner in this category, Jio, trailed closely behind at 56.3ms, but its users' average response time worsened by 2.1ms since Opensignal's last report. That said, Vodafone users observed the highest improvement of 3.6ms to score 60.6ms. Latency Experience measures the response time of a network (the lower the score the better), and it is a key factor in determining how real-time communications and gaming applications perform on mobile connections.

Jio continues to dominate 4G Availability in India. "The operator once again won the award with a commendable score of 98.2%. Having said that, all three of its rivals are making big strides to close the gap with the leader since our last report. Jio also won our inaugural 4G Coverage Experience award in India, while Airtel finished second with 6.8 points," says Opensignal.

Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-10, it analyzes the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by Opensignal users of all networks.