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T-Mobile Named Fastest US Mobile Carrier by New Wirefly Report (phonedog.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the internet-speeds dept.

T-Mobile offered the fastest internet speed to subscribers between Q1 and Q2 of 2017 (which ended in June), according to the Wirefly Speed Test, which combed through thousands of test results made using its service. T-Mobile scored highest in overall speed while Verizon ended up with a close second spot, Wirefly, which doesn't require Java or Flash for its tests, added. AT&T and Sprint rounded out the ranking at third and fourth, respectively, the report added, which was done in collaboration with SourceForge. T-Mobile also topped the chart for offering the fastest mobile download speed. An anonymous user writes: T-Mobile offered 22.18 Mbps download speed, while Verizon Wireless ended up with another close second with 21.45 Mbps download. AT&T came in with an average download speed of 17.00 Mbps, and Sprint was trailing all with 15.76 Mbps. Verizon finished with the fastest average upload speed at 16.06 Mbps. You can read the full report here.

34 comments

  1. They are all fast enough for me by b0bby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Speedwise, they are all fast enough for me - in fact I'm happy with my throttled Cricket service (8Mbps). I'm more interested in coverage, and I found AT&T's to be better for me when I switched from T-Mobile. Both were better coverage than Sprint for me too, but I think Verizon is better yet. I'm just unwilling to pay the Verizon premium.

    1. Re:They are all fast enough for me by silverkniveshotmail. · · Score: 2

      Cheap prepaid services like Cricket and Virgin are fine in urban areas but they don't offer any roaming at all. When I drove from Tacoma to Detroit with Virgin I went days without service.

    2. Re:They are all fast enough for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Cheap prepaid services like Cricket and Virgin are fine in urban areas but they don't offer any roaming at all. When I drove from Tacoma to Detroit with Virgin I went days without service.

      Cricket IS AT&T only prepaid and throttled max speed. Cricket will work anywhere that AT&T will.

    3. Re:They are all fast enough for me by b0bby · · Score: 1

      True, but the AT&T network is pretty good. For 99% of the time it's fine for me, and when I'm really in the sticks I'm quite happy to also be off the grid.

    4. Re: They are all fast enough for me by kletus · · Score: 1

      Same here. I'm in a very rural area and get between 1 and 2 bars with an average download speed of ~6 mbps. I stream 100+ gigs of DirectvNow across that monthly for about $53. It's all a matter of what you need.

    5. Re:They are all fast enough for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, I'm still reluctantly with AT&T. I should drag a couple friends with different services to the places I use to test (cabin, folk's farm, etc.) that historically have poor coverage. My brother has Sprint and my mom's work phone is Verizon, I seem to have better talk/txt than they do. If my brother has data it is a little faster, but that is only if he stands still in the one corner of the cabin.

      I'm not sure how much is the service vs the phone model. I really should do a more scientific study if only someone would give me a bunch of identical phones for the various networks.

    6. Re: They are all fast enough for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You shouldn't be using wireless as your main source of broadband video. What the fuck. This is why every time I really need to get some decent bandwidth, it stutters. It's also why my phone bill keeps going up. Basically, people like me who use wired connections for streaming are subsidizing people like you. We need to be billed per bit.

    7. Re:They are all fast enough for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to have AT&T but only saw good performance between 2am and 4am or so. T-Mobile is 10x faster outside those hours, here in Central CA. I have Ting (prepaid T-Mobile) now and the only place my phone hasn't worked was population 120 and the Wifi seemed to be a good substitute. /shrug 1/3 the cost.

    8. Re: They are all fast enough for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree.
      I also wonder why I can't get anywhere near this speed with my equally expensive cable service. Which is supposed to be 200Mbps...but it's more like 20.

    9. Re: They are all fast enough for me by jnork · · Score: 1

      Yes, it is my fault your video stutters. Because I shouldn't be watching video on your bandwidth. Also, it's my fault your bill is increasing.

      --
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    10. Re:They are all fast enough for me by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Cricket is an AT&T brand. Virgin is an MVNO that currently uses the Sprint network. "Roaming", in the US, is something people worried about in the 1990s when there were 600 different AMPS networks rather than four nationwide LTE networks.

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    11. Re:They are all fast enough for me by silverkniveshotmail. · · Score: 1

      I'm not talking about roaming from a billing perspective I'm talking about being able to make calls on other networks.

    12. Re:They are all fast enough for me by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 1

      Except on AT&T microcells.You can't add Cricket numbers to the allowable list.

    13. Re: They are all fast enough for me by Trondheim · · Score: 1

      Sometimes wireless is the only option in rural areas. Do you expect everyone to live in a city?

    14. Re: They are all fast enough for me by ShaneNorman · · Score: 1

      Virgin is actually a Sprint brand. It has not been an MVNO for a while now.

  2. First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    -- Posted from a Verizon phone

  3. First Reply by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Funny

    -- Posted from an Apple //c

    1. Re:First Reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funniest post in a long time. Thanks.

  4. Fast means nothing by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you don't have coverage where you want it then it don't mean shit how fast your network is.

    T-Mobile .. I'm looking at you. My house is in a dead spot surrounded by T-Mobile towers.

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    1. Re: Fast means nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're in an office building and have T-Mobile (like I do), then you must be an idiot (like me).

    2. Re: Fast means nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      THIS is the issue. T-Mobile may be fast - if you have the right device and are in a spot with 4 bars on the right band. However, most of their coverage map is a bad joke. They need 2 coverage maps: one for the traditional 4G/LTE frequencies and one for all the new ones (supported only by a few phones) that they bought over the last few years. They would be vastly different.

      Also, even in areas that *have* coverage, T-Mobile is seldom available inside a building; Verizon, AT&T, Sprint usually are. One example: at the supermarket I usually go to, I have 4 bars in the parking lot. Inside the store, I have none. I don't think their building has a Faraday Cage (standard tilt-up construction). Speed is meaningless when coverage is that bad.

    3. Re:Fast means nothing by jbmartin6 · · Score: 2

      If your house is surrounded by towers and you get no signal, isn't the problem with your house?

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    4. Re:Fast means nothing by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You might want to look at your phone. T-mobile has been investing in its LTE network, but many phones can't operate on the newer LTE band frequencies. I just replaced my wife's phone with a Motorola g5 plus because it has a new radio and gets these LTE bands. It was a huge improvement over the Nexus 4 she was using. Lookup your phone's LTE band capabilities and see if that isn't your problem.

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    5. Re:Fast means nothing by preflex · · Score: 1

      You could have just replaced your wife's Nexus 4's modem firmware.

      The 33-107-hybrid firmware works for me. I get 35-40 mbps on T-Mobile on my mako.

      Bonus: Set your TTL to 65 on tethered devices to avoid throttling.

    6. Re:Fast means nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly correct. I have project Fi which uses T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular towers and there are places I go where T-Mobile and Sprint doesn't exist but USC does, like in Iowa. T-Mobile's and Sprint's speed is exactly zero k bits/sec. I don't know what USC's speed is but it's good enough for me in Iowa.

    7. Re:Fast means nothing by Tailhook · · Score: 3, Informative

      Firmware changes won't do it. The phone needs the right RF filters to function on these the expanded LTE bands. Just because you can get LTE firmware doesn't mean you'll get the benefit of newer frequencies. For instance, Band 66 is wider than Band 4, so you need a transceiver with filters adapted to the expanded band. Band 12 is a relatively low frequency, which provides long range, but is far out of band for the filters in older devices. Another issue is VoLTE support (voice over LTE); it's not available on every device yet whether it's physically possible or not; Nexus 4 can't do it no matter what firmware you load.

      The Moto g5 plus is certified by T-mobile to function on all of their bands and support VoLTE as well. That makes it a good budget phone choice if you're on T-mobile.

      T-mobile doesn't have the capital to compete with Verizon et al. on the traditional frequencies so they've invested in newer frequency bands as the FCC has auctioned them. You need to pay close attention to your phone's capabilities if you care about coverage and performance with T-mobile. Even flagship phones available today can't get the full benefits; you have to investigate the device.

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  5. Anecdata by rsborg · · Score: 2

    If you don't have coverage where you want it then it don't mean shit how fast your network is.

    T-Mobile .. I'm looking at you. My house is in a dead spot surrounded by T-Mobile towers.

    Just a counter anecdote - my house gets great coverage for T-Mobile whereas Verizon is impossible and AT&T is spotty. I've been in city centers (LV, BOS, NY) where I had signal on TMO LTE while my VZ and ATT coworkers had none.

    Driving cross country is about the only place where other networks beat TMO but then again, out of 3 networks we had none driving through southern Oregon.

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  6. Have a second carrier on standby by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    T-Mobile works pretty well where I live and work (Seattle-Tacoma area) - where T-Mobile is bad, all the carriers seem to be bad. But when we go visit the inlaws in far NE Washington state, T-Mobile's coverage dies somewhat north of Spokane.

    So what we did is purchase a Verizon iPad. Most of the time it's not subscribed to a data plan; but, when we're going to travel, we'll preload one of the Verizon prepaid plans (e.g. 5GB for $60). That works well enough for wi-fi calling and provides a small amount of data for use during our visit.

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    1. Re:Have a second carrier on standby by starblazer · · Score: 1

      from someone who doesn't live in a major metro... this is the opposite. I can go where T-mobile doesn't exist (no roaming either) and everyone else does.

      I love T-mobile for the customer-friendly aspects of it (binge on, tmo tuesdays, wifi calling that actually works, intl roaming)... but I value coverage more than that and everyone else has them beat with the exception of cheap international roaming...

    2. Re:Have a second carrier on standby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The next time you're up for a new phone, if you're open to using Android and don't mind the cost of a Pixel phone, you might consider switching to Project Fi. It switches between T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular and you can get a free data-only card for your iPad.

      It doesn't work on Verizon or AT&T now, but there's no reason it couldn't later, other than the number of Fi customers being presumably small.

  7. +1 insightful by mccrew · · Score: 1

    Posting to remove accidental mod

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  8. fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When will they learn, Its not the fastest if you have no connectivity. Fix coverage then you can fix speed.

  9. Ill Named by sdinfoserv · · Score: 1

    I have a Verizon work phone and a TMobile personal phone . I also a frequent hiker and camper and travel less populated areas . I live in Washington State where TMobile is headquartered. Even here, most of the time Verizon works while TMobile has zero bars.