[fordday]

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Of late I am getting horrible internet speed in my airtel 4G mobile connection. It is frequently getting dropped and most of the time I see only one (up/down) arrow next to the 4G icon. I sometimes switch back to 3G which seems to get connected. Overall it has deteriorated.

My wife has Vodafone 4G and she started complaining about the same. It seems both airtel and vodafone seems affected. Are they upgrading their infrastructure? It seems too much of a coincidence that both will be doing it at the same time.

Is it that Jio has slowly strangled them both? Quarterly financial reports of both says they are bleeding cash.

This is in Bangalore. Are other cities facing it?

Thanks.

[splitsecond]

Vodafone and idea are going through a hardware merging process, so temperory issues will be there. Don't know about Airtel. All service providers are going through losses including jio. Jio will continue this predatory pricing till few are left. My guess is only jio and Airtel will be there after two years.

[FrodoOfTheShire]

Originally Posted by fordday

Are other cities facing it?

Here in Bhubneswar I feel its the opposite! My primary SIM was in Airtel till Feb-Mar this year, when Airtel's 4G internet suddenly became pathetic, out of frustration I ported the number to JIO. After the cyclone Fani in May, JIO has not really recovered yet and 4G speeds and overall connectivity is very poor, while Airtel is going really strong. Hence ported back to Airtel again last week!

[_chikku]

Yes Airtel is bad in Bangalore. I just changed my CUG connection to Vodafone. It seems Vodafone is also patchy at certain areas.
I had complained to Airtel before switching. A person came, checked and said it cannot be improved. Pathetic thing is whenever there is a power fail in the area network would go down. It seems tower UPS was not working or missing. Any ways with all these free-mania this is bound to happen.
People who are unable to get data speed in Airtel 4G should just switch to 3G prefered and speeds are better in this range.

[rovingeye]

I've had issues with my Vodafone 4g since as long as I can remember. Their service really sucks, in Delhi that is. At home, my Airtel Broadband pretty much sucks as well. It's supposed to be a 100 Mbps connection and while it was very good at one point, it often goes into buffering mode while watching Netflix these days. Just yesterday, I sent them a request to upgrade me to a 300 Mbps plan after getting utterly frustrated with my connection quality.

[vinu_h]

In Bengaluru, Vodafone network disappears very often. Thank you "dual sim".

[Rajeevraj]

There is definitely no consistency on the Vodafone 4g network. Even in the same location, quality of service widely varies. Having said that I recently took a Jio Sim and honestly the experience is not very different.

[F150]

That's why dual SIM phones with dual volte are a blessing.
I have a JIO as my primary SIM which works in most of the places and when it doesn't I have Vodafone as my fall back.

Atleast in the places I live and work, Jio and Vodafone are the top two.

[murillo]

I also face poor quality of service with my Airtel voice and 4G in Chennai. Normally Airtel 4G is so slow to be almost useless, but during peak hours it is totally dead. Call quality is also poor. Many times, the call will not go through and then often the call will just die on me in the middle of conversation.

I have a backup with a Jio sim in my dual sim phone. Jio too is not on top of the game but it is better than Airtel. Jio's 4G will be slow for a few seconds but after that it quickly latches on. Call connection and audio quality also are good.

In my native place within Tamil Nadu, Jio is very good. My parents living in my native place, who are not savvy with mobile devices, are using Jio for WhatsApp, YouTube, etc., and they have a great and consistent experience. I get the feeling that Jio is very good in semi-urban and rural areas.

No experience with any other mobile service provider.

[Sebring]

None of the service providers own cell towers. It's a separate company maintaining it as per a Senior VP at Airtel, who happens to be an old friend. So if service is bad in a particular 'cell', it's bad for all. Once a sunrise industry, the sector has peaked.

[WhiteFang]

I expected this with the pricing the strategy traditional players are forced to adapt with the entry of JIO. The wafer-thin margin and ever-decreasing customer base ensured that no new investments are made to increase the quality of service. We surely have the cheapest data pricing and worst service quality.

[hrman]

I had issues with Airtel at my office in Koramangla. Whatsapp was not working , gmail not loading etc. We complained to Airtel. They came, observed, recorded some readings, informed us that the nearby tower has been optimised. No change. Very often the data would show the x symbol, meaning it has stopped.
Out of frustation, I ported to Jio. Their data is far better in my office. I heard stories that Jio is slowly jamming signals of other providers to encourage more porting to their network. Unverified of course so cant comment.
In terms of broadband landline, I was facing issues with airtel 40 mbps connection. Amazon prime would become pixelated and buffer up very often. Switched to hathway cable net. Speeds are far steady and no more buffering.
Being an Airtel customer for over 11 years, had to take the decision to port out and look for alternative providers.

[sups]

I am at Pune with Vodafone 4G for myself and Airtel 4G for my wife. Both are competing with each other in terms of call drop and slow 4G speed. Times of India today has acknowledged network issues with Vodafone - Idea network.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by Sebring

None of the service providers own cell towers. It's a separate company maintaining it as per a Senior VP at Airtel, who happens to be an old friend. So if service is bad in a particular 'cell', it's bad for all. Once a sunrise industry, the sector has peaked.

This is partially correct. What your friend is talking about is Indus Towers, a joint venture of Airtel, Vodafone and Idea; hiving of their passive infrastructure (all the mobile towers you see) into a separate company. This was done back in 2007 just before the new licenses were given out to the new telecom players entering the market (Uninor, SSTL, MTS, etc) with the understanding that the new entity will be able to market its services to these new firms as well as bring in heavy synergic and operational efficiencies to the three (now two - Airtel & Voda-Idea) owners.

In principle, a tower that was belonging to one of the three mobile operators at a strategic location could be now used by the other two mobile operators bringing in a common coverage capability across all 3 players. But in reality, that is not possible at every tower, especially the important and strategically located towers in metro and Tier 1 cities. Enabling the tower for the additional operators requires setting up additional equipment on the tower, and this would mean renegotiating the rent with the building owner (if it's a roof-top tower) or the land owner (if it's a ground based tower); which is a very ugly business. Even if it is done, the tower might not have space/capacity to handle the additional equipment of the additional operators.

This is just one of the constraints that bring in a difference; there are other factors too (number of mobile customers of that operator being covered by that tower, the cost-revenue analysis and other factors) that would be considered even before the operator tries to add his equipment on to that tower. Considering the extremely volatile and changing situation, the differences are bound to be there.

Also this is only from the passive infrastructure; there are bound to be more causes of coverage differences wrt to the active infrastructure being managed by the operator's staff/vendors.

[momsonlydriver]

I'm at Kolkata, you are totally right regarding the connection problem for both the brands. Seems like jio has taken stolen the show. I use airtel and I don't get network in my own house so I use my wifi that is airtel broadband (excellent quality internet) for WhatsApp call.

I recommend broadband of airtel but not sim cards of airtel or Vodafone.