India’s telecom regulator says Reliance Jio’s 4G speed is slowest; Here’s what the company said in its defence

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) stated Reliance Jio’s 4G data speed is slowest when compared to Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone.

The regulatory body, in its analytics, posted that Airtel’s 4G speed was at 11.4 megabits per second (mbps), Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications' at 7.9 mbps, Idea's at 7.6 mbps, and Vodafone's at 7.3 mbps.

It revealed that Reliance Jio’s 4G network speed was recorded at 6.2 mbps.

However, Reliance Jio trumped TRAI’s findings and was quick to respond. The Mukesh Ambani-owned company stated the TRAI’s analysis had a bias.

"With reference to statistics published on Trai's analytics website, we have performed an internal analysis of the same. Based on this analysis, we believe that the comparison of Jio speeds with other operators has an inherent bias against Jio data usage,” Reliance Jio stated.

Reliance Jio said there is a daily fair usage policy (FUP) limit of 4GB data consumption per user. This limit has been setup with the express intention of preventing heavy data users from degrading the experience of other users.

“Before this FUP limit is reached, Jio customers enjoy unmatched 4G LTE speeds on the Jio network. However, after the FUP usage limit is reached, speeds are reduced to 256kbps,” the company stated.

"Historically, we have observed that a disproportionate number of speed tests are performed once the FUP comes into effect. This is because most users don't consider performing the test until they observe a deterioration of speed... This has the effect of dragging the average far below the speeds experienced by Jio customers who are enjoying full 4G LTE speeds,” said Reliance Jio.