It’s all well and good claiming that your network is the biggest and fastest, but, if user testing doesn’t back it up, there’s no validity to those claims. Turns out, Tmo’s claims at CES in January that it has the fastest network (based on Ookla Speed Test results) are backed up by another set of results, recently published by OpenSignal. Of all the top 4 carriers, T-Mobile’s network was found to be the fastest on average, with speeds averaging around 11.5Mbps.

Sadly, the report wasn’t all rosy in favor of the Magenta carrier. The “Time on LTE” metric was also considered and generally shows how good a particular carrier’s LTE coverage really is. And, while users experience faster average speeds on T-Mobile’s LTE, they don’t spend anywhere near as much time on it as Verizon or AT&T users. Thus showing that Tmo still has need of expansion.

That said, it’s still encouraging to see T-Mobile at least approaching a similar level to AT&T, a carrier whose LTE network has been up and running much longer. T-Mobile, as we all know, only kicked off its next generation wireless coverage just over 12 months ago. Going from 0 to over 60 percent time on LTE in that space of time is pretty remarkable.

Increased user speeds – of course – means that those customers on the network are getting a great experience of fast internet. But it would be foolish to ignore the difference in number between T-Mobile subscribers and Verizon’s. The fact that fewer people are using the network, means less congestion, and better speeds. Still, it’s a good result for T-Mobile overall and shows the company is definitely moving in the right direction.

Source: OpenSignal
Via: ZDNet, GigaOM