Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile

T-Mobile beats out Verizon for title of fastest mobile network in U.S.

Sandra Stafford
By

For the first time in PCMag’s 12 years of testing mobile networks in the United States, T-Mobile has been named the fastest mobile network. With average download speeds of 162.3Mbps, T-Mobile greatly outperformed the competition in most cities. After years of lagging behind, how did T-Mobile turn it around?

Investing in C-band

In the race to provide 5G service, the major carriers pursued different strategies. Verizon and AT&T expanded their use of mmWave, a band of spectrum that provides high speeds but doesn’t travel far. Indoor places with heavy traffic like airports are perfect for mmWave, but it’s unsuitable for outdoor broadband, especially in less-populated areas like the rural stretches between cities.

Recommended Videos

What did T-Mobile do differently? It bought Sprint. The acquisition gave T-Mobile access to a cache of midband airwaves, increasing their capacity to offer 5G service. T-Mobile was the only carrier with nationwide 5G that was considerably faster than 4G. In cities like Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, and Tucson, Arizona, T-Mobile 5G phones made use of 5G around 90% of the time.

Related
Image used with permission by copyright holder

What about the competition?

Verizon and AT&T showed a decline in overall speed, but that’s probably about to change. Those two companies spent almost $70 billion on C-band licenses at a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auction in February 2021. They’ll begin deploying 5G on that spectrum starting in December.

T-Mobile’s 5G service was the fastest overall, but its coverage is lacking in small cities and rural regions. AT&T outperformed T-Mobile in those regions, particularly in the Northwest and the Carolinas. AT&T’s average download speed was 98.2Mbps, much slower than T-Mobile’s, but that doesn’t make a difference if T-Mobile doesn’t provide coverage in your area.

At 93.7Mbps, Verizon’s average download speed was slightly lower than AT&T’s. The company bought more C-band licenses than any other, so it’s poised to offer faster speeds in the near future as it rolls out 5G service.

If you haven’t already upgraded to a 5G phone, it’s going to be worth doing soon regardless of which carrier you use. The difference between 4G and 5G has been underwhelming, but T-Mobile’s win proves that midband 5G is going to change that.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Sandra Stafford
Sandra Stafford
Mobile Writer
Sandra Stafford is a Mobile team writer. She has three years of experience writing about consumer technology. She writes…
The 15 most important smartphones that changed the world forever
Huawei P30 Pro and P30

If there’s any piece of technology that has made a significant impact on the lives of everyone, it’s the cellular phone —  specifically, the smartphone. It’s literally a tiny computer that fits into your pocket, and brings a plethora of information, entertainment, and lets you capture visual memories or be productive wherever you go. Pretty much everyone has a smartphone these days, for better or for worse.

But have you ever thought about which smartphones have been the most important and influential ones that shaped the rest of the industry? Let’s take a look at what we consider to be the most important smartphones of all time.
iPhone (2007)

Read more
What is 5G? Speeds, coverage, comparisons, and more
The 5G UW icon on the Samsung Galaxy S23.

It's been years in the making, but 5G — the next big chapter in wireless technology — is finally approaching the mainstream. While we haven't yet reached the point where it's available everywhere, nearly all of the best smartphones are 5G-capable these days, and you're far more likely to see a 5G icon lit up on your phone than not.

There's more to 5G than just a fancy new number, though. The technology has been considerably more complicated for carriers to roll out since it covers a much wider range of frequencies than older 4G/LTE technology, with different trade-offs for each. It's also a much farther-reaching wireless technology, promising the kind of global connectivity that was once merely a dream found in futuristic sci-fi novels.

Read more
What is 5G UC? Here’s what that icon on your phone really means
5G logo on the Motorola Edge (2022).

If you own a 5G-capable smartphone — which are all of the best phones today — there’s a good chance you’ve seen different 5G network icons showing up in your status bar. It’s a stark contrast to the pre-5G days when your phone showed “4G” or “LTE” no matter where you went.

It can get a bit confusing to see a 5G indicator one moment and then “5G UC” or “5G UW” the next. It’s not something you need to worry too much about, as you don’t usually have much control over it, but it’s still helpful to understand what these different symbols mean — and why they matter.
The humble beginnings of 5G

Read more