Dallas, Texas has been something of a popular talking point among T-Mobile watchers over the past couple of months. It’s one of the first places in the States to show signs of the faster 20+20 LTE network lighting up. RootMetrics has published its most recent results from the area, and it’s generally good news.
Since the test in March earlier this year, T-Mobile’s average speed has increased dramatically. Downloads have gone up from 8.0Mbps to 15.7Mbps and uploads are up to 7.6Mbps from 1.8Mbps. In real life use, that’s seen an average email download drop from 6.6 seconds to just 2.8 seconds. And, with some users reporting speeds over 70Mbps on Category 4 devices, that’s almost certain to go up further between now and the next set of reports.
With that said, first place in the combined RootScore aware went to AT&T. Combining network reliability and speed gave “Big Blue” a points score of 98.6 out of 100. Verizon finished 2nd with 96.7, with Tmo only a few points behind in 3rd, with 93.7.
One thing that this test has made absolutely clear is something we already know. T-Mobile needs to improve the consistency of its coverage, and expand it to cover more areas. Tmo performed fantastically well in the data speed tests, but didn’t fare so well in the voice call test. It finished in 4th place behind Sprint, and was the only one to have over 1% of calls fail. AT&T and Verizon had 0.2% and 0.3% failures respectively.
Of course, this is only one area in the States – albeit a fairly large one – and it is showing major signs of improvement over the past 6 months. T-Mobile may have some way to go before it matches the big two, but if the Dallas results are anything to go by, it won’t be long before it gets there.
Via: Rootmetrics