Mobile Speeds Rise Quickly Post-Lockdown

Opensignal analyzed the Download Speed Experience seen by Indian smartphone users in the last five months to understand how their mobile network experience changed during COVID-19 compared to that observed before the lockdown.

As India adapts to the new normal that includes social distancing, quarantines and lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, access to the internet has become critical. With users now spending more time connected to the internet for a wide range of day-to-day activities – including working from home, virtual classes, and entertainment – it has become crucial for mobile network operators to provide users with quality services. The lockdown has also led to a mass migration of India’s interstate migrant workers from cities to their hometowns in suburban or rural areas, which means users may be spending more time in parts of the country where operators originally may have not designed network infrastructure to manage large traffic loads.

Mobile analytics firm Opensignal analyzed the Download Speed Experience seen by Indian smartphone users in the last five months to understand how their mobile network experience changed during COVID-19 compared to that observed before the lockdown. It found that Indian users experienced a negative impact on download speeds during the initial phases of lockdown, and this trend was more pronounced in Tier 2 cities compared to Tier 1 cities. However, more recently – when lockdown measures were partially or completely relaxed – Download Speed Experience improved significantly, especially for users in Tier 1 cities.

For this insight, Opensignal used the Indian government’s three-tier classification system for cities, where Tier 1 cities have the largest populations and Tier 3 cities have the lowest.

Tier 2 cities were the most affected during the lockdown