When we first reported on the early Indian 5G experience, soon after India concluded its much-awaited 5G spectrum auctions in August 2022, we found that at 242.1Mbps, India's 5G download speeds were on average 16.5 times faster than 4G. This was a promising start for the country's next-generation networks. In this analysis, we will reflect on whether 5G download speeds have been impacted by the increased load on the country’s 5G networks.
Key findings:
- Decreased 5G Download Speeds: 5G download speed decreased from 304Mbps in Q1 2023 to 280.7Mbps in Q4 2023 as 5G data consumption increased.
- Peak Hour Performance Decline: There is a significant drop in 5G download speeds across all hours of the day, with a greater decline during peak hours (9 pm-12 am) in Q1 2024 compared to Q1 2023
- Uneven effect. Despite rolling out a 5G standalone access network, Jio’s 5G performance has been negatively impacted as its 5G network traffic, number of 5G users and 5G Availability have been growing at a faster rate than Airtel’s.
Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio provide commercial 5G services without additional charges. They offer 5G at the same pricing as 4G, and currently, both companies offer unlimited 5G data plans, which in turn drives data traffic. According to TRAI, data consumption using 5G surged to 12.6% in Q4 2023, corresponding to 6239 petabytes. Jio has reported that its “5G traffic (it) is now approaching 30% of the mobility data traffic”.
At the same time the number of 5G customers increased to 180 million, with the majority being Jio True5G at 108 million and Airtel 5G Plus at 72 million. Looking ahead, GSMA Intelligence predicts that the number of 5G connections will grow further, exceeding 260 million in Q4 2025 and accounting for 22% of all connections.
Given the additional load on the 5G network both in terms of the number of subscribers and data traffic, not surprisingly, India’s national 5G Download Speed score decreased from 304Mbps in Q1 2023 to 280.7Mbps in Q4 2023.
We can also see a significant drop in 5G download speeds across all hours of the day for our users. Furthermore, there is a greater drop during peak hours (9 pm-12 am) compared to the early morning in Q1 2024 than in Q1 2023. Evening hours are when users are most likely to stream video, watch games, and do online shopping, as mobile still tends to be the primary mode of connectivity.
To address this issue, Airtel is focusing its capacity investments on 5G, and stopped investing in any capacity investments in 4G. The company stated that it has rolled out about 43,100 network sites and 55,982 kilometers of fiber, as backbone network infrastructure is critical when it comes to ensuring good quality services for end users. Airtel has also previously mentioned that it has managed to offload its 4G traffic onto its 5G network. Airtel chose to focus on 5G non-standalone access (NSA) technology, which relies on a 4G core network, while Jio has opted for 5G standalone access.
Both operators have been investing in scaling networks — the total number of 5G base transceiver stations (BTS) in India increased to 446,000 in May 2024, translating into 31 5G BTS per 100,000 inhabitants. As a comparison, in South Korea, this proportion is 593, and across the EU, 103, pointing to the fact that these are still areas where the 5G network has to be built up in India.
With 5G performance changing nationally, we wanted to understand whether our 5G users' experience has changed over time across regions as well. Airtel's performance has improved across all bar three telecom circles, namely Punjab, Mumbai, and Delhi. Nationally, the average 5G download speeds seen by our Airtel users have increased from 260.4Mbps in Q1 2023 to 273.6Mbps in Q1 2024. Over the same period, Airtel’s 5G Availability grew from 12.5% to 20.7%. 5G Availability is the proportion of time Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription have an active 5G connection. It is an important measure of the mobile experience as users can only benefit from the superior experience that 5G provides when they have a 5G connection.
Jio's results tell the opposite story. At a national level, Jio scored 261.8Mbps in Q1 2024 compared to 323.6Mbps in Q1 2023, and our Jio users experienced a similar decrease at a circle level, too. The most negatively impacted were our 5G users in Uttar Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal. However, nationally, Jio’s 5G Availability increased from 34.9% in Q1 2023 to 64.9% in Q1 2024 — an impressive increase. The reason is that as Jio scales across the country, it increasingly leverages low-band spectrum — the proportion of 5G readings we collected when our users were connected to Jio’s 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands has almost doubled from nearly 10% in Q1 2023 to over 18% in Q1 2024.
As a reminder, Jio is the only operator in India with access to 700MHz low-band spectrum. Previous analyses have found that low band spectrum increases the reach of 5G mobile networks while reducing 5G download speed.
Furthermore, Airtel and Jio launched FWA products last year, offering a promising use case for 5G in India, especially considering the small proportion of households that subscribe to fixed broadband. We recently analyzed Jio’s FWA performance, showing that both its FWA and mobile Consistent Quality scores are closely aligned throughout the day.
We will continue to monitor 5G performance in India, especially as Vodafone Idea (Vi) is set to launch 5G services, too, and a 5G auction is on the horizon. To stay up to date, please sign up for our newsletter.
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