Ookla also found that 89% of Indian smartphone users are ready to upgrade to 5G. “While we need to approach these early results with caution, 5G devices are already showing they can achieve much faster speeds, at least under artificial controlled testing circumstances e.g., no network congestion and ideal network coverage,' the report said. According to the Speedtest Global Index, India ranked 117th in the world for mobile download speed at 13.52 Mbps in August 2022. These new 5G results show that 5G speeds are far superior than India’s existing network. In Varanasi, Jio and Airtel achieved closer parity, with Airtel achieving a 5G median download speed at 516.57 Mbps to Jio’s 485.22 Mbps median download speed since June 2022. In Mumbai, Airtel's speed reached 271.07 Mbps median download speed compared to Jio’s 515.38 Mbps median download since June 2022. In Kolkata, operators’ median download speeds varied the most since June where Airtel’s median download speed was 33.83 Mbps while Jio had faster median download speed at 482.02 Mbps.

In the national capital, Airtel reached nearly 200 Mbps median download speed at 197.98 Mbps while Jio almost broke 600 Mbps (598.58 Mbps) in June. Ookla said it compared median 5G download speeds across the four cities. Bharti Airtel has launched 5G services in eight cities and Reliance Jio launched in four cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Varanasi.

Ookla 5g test