Reliance JioFiber pre-launch: Customer Experience – Not fastest broadband

It has been many months since Reliance JioFiber (GigaFiber) has been available for use under the Preview offer. And despite being in a kind of public beta, GigaFiber has been topping speed index charts offering greater broadband speeds than before. However, off late, GigaFiber has been losing its speed advantage and a bigger reason for that is the rapid expansion of its user base.

In a random survey, Reliance JioFiber is no more topping the list. Instead, ACT Fiber and Airtel Broadband have occupied the top two spots as the fastest broadband providers according to an Independent survey. Jio GigaFiber has dropped its average speeds to 3.49Mbps, which is substantially lower than its previous average monthly speeds.

However, there are reasons that put Reliance JioFiber at a disadvantage. For starters, GigaFiber is expanding rapidly under the Preview offer and it is still in a public beta mode. Therefore, the network has to accommodate thousands of new connections as well as increased traffic from each of them. A GigaFiber connection can be had for almost no monthly cost at the moment – subscribers only need to pay Rs 2,500 as a one-time security deposit. Hence, GigaFiber is effectively extremely cheap to operate for a subscriber and hence, in high demand.

On average, most large scale broadband operators have witnessed a drop in speeds and that can be attributed to the fact that they have engaged themselves recently in price wars. Hathway and Airtel have been doing some serious price cuts in order to gain more subscribers and keep the existing ones engaged. Jio leads the way by effectively giving high-speed broadband service for free per month. Hence, with more price benefits, more subscribers are coming on the network and overall performance, as a result, is probably getting affected.