The list of Indian cities ranked for digital readiness, unveiled at the India Mobile Congress on Wednesday afternoon threw up some surprises. Bengaluru and Gurugram, or for that matter, the heavy duty metros of Delhi and Mumbai, were conspicuous by their absence in the top 10.
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The list, compiled by OpenSignal, looked at the ten most populous cities in the country, as well as designated smart cities. The topper turned out, ironically enough, to be Srinagar. The very capital of Jammu & Kashmir that has been more associated with internet shutdowns that superior internet quality.
But that evidently is the verdict of OpenSignal, the world’s leading evaluator of mobile and network quality. It looked at three parameters – 4G/5G availability, consistent quality, as well as download speeds, to come up with the winner.
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Interestingly, none of the metro cities made it into the top 10, with Agra taking the second spot, followed by Faridabad in Haryana, which is technically in Delhi BCR, though. The highest metro placement is Delhi at No.13, Chennai at No.19 and Kolkata at No.20 (Howrah comes in at No.21)
For the larger Mumbai metropolitan region, Kalyan-Dombivali fared better than main Mumbai city, coming in one position ahead of the maximum city at No. 26. Navi Mumbai came in at a lowly No.31 (Vasai-Virar at No.49).
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Bengaluru, the IT capital of the country, shockingly came at just No. 34, despite being a designated smart city to boot.
After Srinagar, Agra and Faridabad in the top three, the following cities rounded out the top 10, in order: Jaipur, Patna, Ranchi, Meerut, Madurai and Dhanbad, with Ahmedabad and Coimbatore jointly sharing the No.10 spot.
The data for the survey was collected by OpenSignal between February and July-end of this year.
