(Last Updated On: October 21, 2016)

According to an estimate by Credit Suisse, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio is the largest telecom operator in the world in the terms of data carried on a daily basis. It is worth noting that Jio delivers 16,000 TB/ day which is way ahead of the second largest teleco China Mobile at 12,000 TB/day, Vodafone Global at 6,000 TB/day, and is followed by China Unicom and Bharti Airtel.

These findings are based on Jio’s recent annoucement of having reached 16 million subscribers by 30 September who consume 1 GB data per day. The agency also said that the traffic handled by Jio is 4.2x greater than Bharti, Idea, and Vodafone combined.

TRAI Terms Jio As The Slowest 4G Operator In The Country

So Reliance Jio might have become the largest telecom operator in terms of its daily data traffic but according to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) it is also the slowest 4G telecom operator in the country, having an average download speed of just 6.2 Mbps.

According to the data from TRAI’s MySpeed portal, Airtel provides the fastest download speed at 11.4 Mbps, followed by RCom at 7.9 Mbps, Idea at 7.6 Mbps, Vodafone at 7.3 Mbps, and Reliance Jio at just 6.2 Mbps.


Jio believes that this data is biased towards high volume data usage on Jio network and the fact that subscribers tend to perform a lot of speed tests after exhausting their high-speed data.

“Based on this analysis, we believe that the comparison of Jio speeds with other operators has an inherent bias against Jio data usage,” said Jio in a statement.

As of now Jio has put a FUP (Fair Usage Policy) of 4 GB daily data in place for putting a check on heavy downloaders who degrade the experience of others on the network. Post the exhaustion of this 4G high-speed data, the subscribers are downgraded to 256 Kbps speed.

“This limit has been setup with the express intention of preventing heavy data users from degrading the experience of other users,” added Jio.

Jio also explained that a lot many subscribers tend to take multiple speed tests after exhausting their high speed data which takes a toll on the average speed calculated by any speed test portal.

“Such users also tend to perform multiple tests until full speeds are restored,” Jio explained.

While Jio is trying to come up with various explanations for explaning this huge drop in its average data speed on the TRAI speed test portal, there is no running away from the fact that Jio 4G network has indeed become slower than even the 3G network of many telcos.

Also, while we agree that millions to subscribers taking speed test after FUP kicks degrade the actual average data speed result, it is the case with all telecom subscribers (not just Jio users) who are on FUP plans.

Note: When Jio announced of having reached 16 million subscribers it also mentioned that each of its users were consuming more than 1 GB data/ day, which is way less than the 4 GB daily high-speed data quota, and hence should not mess with the avereage speed test result greatly.

Jio has to accept that its network has indeed become slow and start taking measures to restore back to its original speed instead of making excuses.

What is your experience with Jio 4G? Mine has been degrading continuously and now my speed vary between 0.3 Mbps to 12 Mbps!

Source: ET