Airtel And Jio Are Butting Heads Over Who Offers The Fastest Internet Speed

India’s largest mobile network, Bharti Airtel, and the disrupting telecom force, Reliance Jio, are embroiled in a fight over internet speeds.

Near the start of this month, Airtel announced that it was rated as India’s fastest mobile network by Ookla, the popular global web service assessing internet performance metrics. On the back of Ookla’s results, Airtel ran an ad campaign promoting itself with the web service’s claim.

This is when the sparks possibly began to fly. Because even as Ookla’s results put Airtel on top, the MySpeed app, run by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), put Jio at pole position for 4G data downloads.

According to an NDTV report, Jio then filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) against Airtel’s claims. The mobile network operator reportedly claims that the Ookla Speedtest is flawed.

NDTV quoted Jio’s letter to ASCI as saying, "The claim of Airtel that it is India's fastest network is false, misleading and incorrect. The claim is being made by Airtel acting in a mala fide manner in collusion with Ookla LLC, who profess to be experts in the domain space of testing mobile Internet speed.”

In return, Airtel reportedly said this was a “deliberate attempt to malign” their brand and “misguide customers through a campaign of misinformation”.

Ookla, for its part, has insisted on the authenticity of its speed tests. It has even stood by its claim that Airtel is India’s fastest mobile network.

It remains to be seen where this conflict goes. What is certain, though, is that the telecom sector will continue to see temperatures rise as the competition heats up further.