According to the fourth quarter (Q4) 2024 report by Ookla, Reliance Jio is currently the only Indian telecom operator with a standalone (SA) 5G network, and it has topped global 5G SA download speeds. Ookla also highlighted that, in terms of 5G SA availability, the top three countries are China (80 per cent), India (52 per cent), and the United States (24 per cent).
Further, India recorded a median download speed of 260.71 Mbps for 5G SA in Q4 2024, outperforming China’s 224.82 Mbps, Japan’s 254.18 Mbps, and Europe’s 221.17 Mbps. However, India’s median latency stood at 52.24 ms, and its upload speed was 15.69 Mbps on SA networks, which lags other benchmarks.
Within India, Reliance Jio has moved its 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) traffic onto a dedicated network slice to deliver optimised performance. Bharti Airtel is currently using it only for its FWA customers, while it is deploying 5G SA. The telco plans to migrate mobile users to SA once capacity pressures arise on its 5G NSA network.
Furthermore, as Jio is the sole operator in India offering 5G SA at present to mobile customers, its performance drives the country’s median 5G SA speeds.
