Last month a report said that T-Mobile has the best 5G availability of the major US carriers, and now another report has echoed that sentiment.
Ookla, maker of the popular Speedtest app, today shared a new report on US mobile networks. In it, Ookla says that T-Mobile had the “majority” of the 5G deployments in US cities, offering service in 5,013 cities. AT&T had 237 deployments and Verizon had 39. Ookla says that in all, there were 5,164 US cities with 5G deployments as of July 5.
While it doesn’t have nearly as many 5G cities, Verizon does offer the fastest 5G speeds in the cities where you can get the signal. Verizon posted a 5G Speed Score of 870.50 in this Ookla report while AT&T was a distant second with 78.68. Sprint and T-Mobile finished third and fourth with scores of 64.82 and 64.26, respectively.
As has been noted before, T-Mobile and Verizon have taken two different strategies when it comes to 5G deployment. T-Mo has focused on coverage, rolling out low-band 5G which can go longer distances and better penetrate buildings but isn’t much faster than LTE, while Verizon has opted for mmWave which is super fast but can’t reach very far.
T-Mo has been working to speed up its 5G network using the 2.5GHz airwaves it got from Sprint, and it says the 2.5GHz 5G coverage is offering average download speeds of 330Mbps.
T-Mobile fared better when taking into consideration all tests taken on 5G devices, not just those taken on a 5G signal. This includes speeds from LTE and older network technologies. Here, AT&T finished first here with a 5G Capable Speed Score of 57.52 while T-Mobile got a score of 49.22. Verizon was next with a score of 47.23 and Sprint got a score of 44.30.
Other areas in the Ookla report where T-Mobile performed well include Consistency Score, where it finished second with 79.2 percent; Latency, where it came in first with 31ms; and the overall Fastest Providers, where it finished second behind AT&T with a Speed Score of 33.69.
To check out the full report for yourself, including a info on the fastest carriers in the 100 most populous US cities, hit the link below.
Source: Ookla