The mobile story in India remains one of improvement, as we continue to see significant improvements across the majority of our metrics in this exciting and rapidly evolving market. However, there are further signs that India’s established 5G networks — Airtel’s and Jio’s — are slowing down, as their 5G Download scores have fallen. Opensignal identified this trend in 2024, which is likely to be the result of increased network congestion as 5G adoption accelerates and data consumption per 5G subscriber increases.

Nevertheless, India’s two 5G leaders should be congratulated on their aggressive 5G rollout strategies, which have catapulted the country to a regional leader for 5G Availability. Both Airtel’s and Jio’s 5G Availability scores are up by over five percentage points from those seen in the last report. Impressively, Jio’s score has topped the 70% availability milestone for the first time — more than double Airtel’s. However, Airtel wins all of our 5G Experience awards (including 5G Download Speed and 5G Upload Speed), reflecting the differing network rollout strategies of India’s 5G leaders.

Airtel and Jio have pursued very different strategies. Jio has rolled out a large-scale 5G standalone access (SA) network using lower band spectrum (700MHz) to boost availability in rural areas, while rolling out 5G using C band (3.5GHz) for urban centers. The Reliance-owned operator has also reserved the highest band mmWave (26GHz) only for high-capacity applications. Airtel, on the other hand, has opted for a 5G non-standalone access (NSA) approach, deploying 5G on existing 4G core infrastructure for faster rollout focussed on urban regions. Despite these different approaches, our 5G Experience metrics show that Jio is quite close behind Airtel. This benefits India’s 5G users, as increasing competition for network plaudits should spur operators on to further heights.

In India’s first 5G spectrum auction in 2022, Airtel and Jio won the vast majority of licenses across the 700MHz, 800MHz, 900MHz, 1,800MHz, 3,300MHz and 26GHz bands. Vi bought only spectrum in the 3,300MHz band in 17 circles and 26GHz band in 16 circles. The Vodafone subsidiary added 18.8MHz in the 900MHz band, 1.8MHz in 1,800MHz and 10MHz in the 2,500MHz bands in the follow-up auction in 2024 — but its spectrum holdings are still dwarfed by Airtel and Jio, particularly in the lower (sub-2,200MHz) bands.

Earlier in 2025, the Indian government confirmed the reallocation of 687MHz of spectrum for mobile use. But the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has stated that this will take mobile operators’ holdings to 320MHz — leaving a deficit of around 400MHz. Much of this outstanding spectrum is in the 6GHz higher-mid band range, and the COAI is now urging the government to auction this to help drive improvements in 5G coverage in the country.

In this report we have only included Airtel and Jio in 5G metrics at a national level — but we have been able to include Vi (Vodafone Idea) in our regional 5G reporting for the first time. Vi is currently behind the Airtel and Jio, having only launched commercially in four circles: Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh Region (Punjab circle) – including Chandigarh, Mohali, Zirakpur and Kharar – and Patna (Bihar circle). Opensignal’s metrics show that in Mumbai, Vi is already neck-and neck with Airtel for 5G Availability, while there is very little light between the operators in this region in terms of our 5G Video Experience, 5G Live Video Experience and 5G Games Experience metrics. But Vi remains behind the leaders Airtel and Jio in terms of 5G Download and Upload Speed. Nevertheless, in Mumbai, our Vi users see the greatest uplift out of the three 5G operators when comparing 5G Download Speed scores against those for overall Download Speed Experience. Vi’s average 5G download speeds are more than four times faster than its overall speeds. Once again, the strong competition in 5G rollout is benefitting India’s 5G users, with our recent analysis showing that Mumbai is now a regional leader in terms of 5G Availability — ahead of many leading global 5G cities such as Seoul in South Korea and Singapore.

Vi is aggressively pricing its 5G services in Mumbai, undercutting its rivals with unlimited 5G data plans starting at INR299 ($3.45) pcm, as the race for 5G subscribers intensifies. The operator now plans to roll out 5G coverage to all 17 of its priority circles (all but the Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Orissa circles) by August this year. Vi is facing a financially challenging time, as it has been in discussions with investors and lenders for over a year to raise funds, while India's Supreme Court recently dismissed petitions from operators seeking a waiver on their pending Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues - amounting to INR450 billion (US$5.23 billion) in Vi’s case. Vi has warned that it will not be able to survive beyond the 2025 financial year without relief from the government or other investors — and this instability is inevitably impacting its network rollout plans.

India’s regulator is playing its part to boost the rollout of 5G and improve mobile network performance in the country. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) auctioned much-needed bandwidth in the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands in mid-2024, and has recently published recommendations on the allocation and use of mmWave spectrum in the 37GHz-40GHz and 42.5GHz-43.5GHz ranges, proposing to include these in upcoming spectrum auctions in the country. The Indian government has also approved plans to refarm or reuse nearly 1,100MHz of spectrum before the end of the decade.

Airtel is refarming its mid-band spectrum to handle increased traffic and plans to begin the rollout of 5G SA technology imminently. The operator has recently agreed to acquire spectrum in the mmWave 26GHz band from Adani Data Networks, comprising a total of 400MHz across six circles, which will be used to boost its 5G network performance.

BSNL, India’s only non-5G national operator, remains focused on expanding its 4G services. Some of the greatest increases in scores from those seen in the previous report were observed by our BSNL users. BSNL's Consistent Quality score has increased markedly — albeit from a low base — rising to 13.8% from the 8% seen in the last report, while both its Download and Upload Speed Experience scores have more-than doubled. However, the operator remains some distance behind its rivals across all of our metrics, and will have to work hard to close this gap.

In this report we examine the mobile network experience of the four main mobile network operators in India — Airtel, BSNL, Jio, and Vi — over a period of 90 days starting on February 01, 2025, and ending on May 01, 2025, to see how they fared.