New Delhi: Dhanbad, which hosts India’s biggest coal mining companies and formed the backdrop of Bollywood film Gangs Of Wasseypur, has a new feather in its cap: it’s the city with the best 4G network availability in India .

Dhanbad, in Jharkhand, is the “hottest city" for 4G availability, according to a report released on Thursday by Opensignal, a London-based company specializing in wireless coverage mapping.

The city scored 95.3% in Opensignal’s measurements, followed by neighbouring Ranchi, which scored 95%. Out of 50 cities covered, no other city crossed the 95% mark.

Srinagar, with a 4G availability score of 94.9%, grabbed the third spot, while Raipur in Chhattisgarh came fourth with a score of 94.8%. Patna was fifth with 94.5%.

Top metros scored low, with Delhi and Mumbai at the 39th and 40th spots, respectively, with scores below 90%, the report said. The two metros also trailed Ahmedabad (92.7%), Bengaluru (92.3%) and Hyderabad (90.5%).

To be sure, Opensignal’s 4G availability metric does not look at coverage or geographic spread of a network, but measures the proportion of time someone with a 4G device and subscription can get a network connection in the places they most commonly visit. If an operator has a 4G availability score of 90%, it means users on that network were connected to 4G 90% of the time.

The report is based on data collected for November, December and January.

Although Bharti Airtel Ltd was the first operator to launch 4G services in Kolkata, 4G network in India went through the roof after the entry of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd in September 2016, which made it the only operator in India with a 4G-only network.

While Reliance Jio is targeting 99% population coverage by March-end, Airtel has over 90% 4G coverage with an aggressive plan to grab the user’s primary 4G SIM slot.

Vodafone Idea has 62% geographical 4G coverage in the country at present with plans to reach 80% in 2019-20, the company had told investors in November last year. This is expected to help close the 4G coverage gap with rivals which have so far outpaced Vodafone Idea on this metric.

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