Verizon and T-Mobile Are In a Virtual Tie For the Best Network In the US (androidcentral.com)

Verizon has tied T-Mobile for the fastest carrier in the United States and both carriers are virtually tied for the "best" in overall LTE download speeds, according to Open Signal's State of Mobile Networks: USA report. Android Central reports: Using data collected from 169,683 users, 4,599,231,167 data points were used to measure network speeds on both 4G and 3G, network availability and latency. The data is collected by users installing the Open Signal app from Google Play or the App Store and going about their daily routine. In their analysis of the collected data, they say that Verizon has improved their 4G network speeds to pull even with T-Mobile who has traditionally done well in this category. They also mention that the average overall network speeds in the U.S. have risen slightly, and over 81% of U.S. residents have access to LTE networks. Availability of high-speed data services shows that all four carriers have improved, but T-Mobile (86.6%) is now within two percentage points of Verizon (88.2%) when it comes to finding an LTE signal. The company with the most improvement here is Sprint, who jumped from covering 69.9% in August to 76.8% in February 2017.

Comments

Re:I thought not all US carriers use LTE

[Pizza]

No, T-Mobile's HSPA+ was sort of "3.5G" . Their "4G" stuff was always LTE.

But honestly, this "download speeds" metric of network superiority presumes you can even get a signal at all -- Out where I'm intending to move (rural NW Florida), the only carrier with coverage is Verizon, and not LTE at that. I have to drive a 5-10 miles to get any T-Mo service at all, and don't pick up LTE until I hit the outskirts of town or major highway, about 20 miles away.

Re:I thought not all US carriers use LTE

[Daemonik]

Yeah, T-Mobile is fine if you never leave the city limits, it sucks in rural areas. AT&T or Verizon are the big carriers with most rural coverage or there's the rural off brand MVNO's but they typically won't sell you a contract unless you live in their area.

Re:I thought not all US carriers use LTE

[msauve]

Yea, this. "Best" isn't just speed, latency, and uptime, which is all this report covers. It's also coverage when you're out in the middle of nowhere. I understand that TMo's gotten somewhat better in some places, but it still doesn't nearly match VZW.

In TMo's own words, they "cover 97% of Verizon's population." Meh. Them's weasel words - it's not covering where the customers are, it's also covering where they aren't, like on a rural highway.

That misleading statistic reminds me of another in recent Sprint advertising, where they claim their network is within 1% of VZW for reliability. Sound good? Nope, it's terrible. The standard for telecom reliability is "5 nines," or 99.999% uptime. That's about 5 minutes of downtime per year. If you have a network which is only 99% reliable (e.g. within 1% of VZW), that's over 3 1/2 days of downtime per year.

Re: I thought not all US carriers use LTE

[squiggleslash]

T-Mobile runs both in parallel. Essentially T-Mobile is running three versions of GSM, regular 2G GSM, UMTS, and LTE. HSPA+ is kinda sorta the latest-greatest UMTS.

I _think_ T-Mobile is planning to drop 2G GSM, but I hope they don't as it's always been the most solid voice system in my experience and is nice as a fallback.