The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has conducted independent drive tests (IDT) covering Hardoi and Shahjahanpur cities and nearby areas and Varanasi to Prayagraj Railway Route of Uttar Pradesh (UP) (East) licensed service area (LSA) during the month of February 2026. The IDT have been designed to capture real-world mobile network performance across diverse usage environments including urban zones, hotspots, public transport hubs etc.
TRAI, through its appointed agency, conducted detailed drive tests of 426.0 kilometres (km) of city test, 123.2 km of railway test and 4.2 km of walk test in Hardoi and Shahjahanpur cities and Varanasi to Prayagraj Railway during February 16- February 20, 2026. Technologies evaluated included 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G, reflecting the service experience of users across multiple handset capabilities. The findings of IDT have been intimated to all the telecom service providers (TSPs) concerned for further necessary action.
Key parameters assessed include call setup success rate, drop call rate, call setup time, call silence rate, speech quality, coverage, download/upload throughput, latency, jitter, packet drop rate, and video streaming delay.
As per the tests, Bharti Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) had 99.86 per cent, 91.23 per cent, 100 per cent and 99.44 per cent call setup success rate while a drop call rate of 0.14 per cent, 2.75, 0.56 per cent and 0 per cent per cent respectively in auto-selection mode (5G/4G/3G/2G).
Airtel, Jio and Vi had silence call rate of 0.60 per cent, 0.80 per cent and 4.33 per cent respectively in packet switched network (4G/5G) while Airtel, BSNL, Jio and Vi have average MOS of 3.95, 2.54, 4.42 and 4.25 respectively.
Further, average download speed of Airtel (5G/4G/2G) is 102.77 Mbps, BSNL (4G/3G/2G) is 6.77 Mbps, Jio (5G/4G) is 158.48 Mbps and Vi (4G/2G) is 38.39 Mbps. Average upload speed of Airtel (5G/4G/2G) is 17.25 Mbps, BSNL (4G/3G/2G) is 2.92 Mbps, Jio (5G/4G) is 20.53 Mbps and Vi (4G/2G) is 10.33 Mbps. Airtel, BSNL, Jio and Vi 50th percentile latency was 42.63 ms, 37.56 ms, 19.88 ms, 32.61 ms respectively.
