Cricket fans in Chennai have the best of it when it comes to cheering for their local team.
Among the eight Indian cities with a team in the ongoing cricket tournament Indian Premier League (IPL), the Tamil Nadu capital has the shortest 4G Video Load Time, according to the mobile analytics company Opensignal.
Fans of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) streaming their team’s game on smartphones will experience load times—the average time taken for a mobile video to start playing—of just six seconds. IPL enthusiasts in Kolkata have the next best experience with video load times of 6.2 seconds, followed by Hyderabad.
The London-based Opensignal ranked 50 cities in India based on 4G Video Load Times collected between January and March 2019.
Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Kerala state, topped with an average video load time of 5.8 seconds. Most of the cities clocked load times of 6-7 seconds. However, Vasai-Virar in Maharashtra and Kota in Rajasthan, trailed the list with speeds of over 8 seconds.
Opensignal in its analysis pointed out that, with data becoming more affordable, millions of Indians are turning to smartphones to watch videos including cricket matches.
It concluded that India’s video experience is evolving in the right direction, as all four of the country’s 4G operators—Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, and Reliance Jio— scored a fair rating. This is an improvement from the poor ratings they received when Opensignal first analysed video experiences in the country six months ago.
However, challenges remain.
There are pockets in India where streaming is sluggish. Connections often have trouble coping with high-resolution formats. The mobile video experience in India is getting better, but there is a lot of room for improvement, said Opensignal.
It noted that India’s mobile operators are increasingly looking to strike deals with content creators to differentiate their services, as the unsustainable price war of recent years comes to an end.