By Catherine Sbeglia Nin
Opensignal once again crowned T-Mobile US the fastest 5G carrier in the US in its latest 5G Experience report. That makes this the sixth “win” for the carrier in a row. T-Mobile beat both Verizon and AT&T in the categories of 5G download speeds, achieving 171 Mbps, and 5G upload speed, where it hit 17.8 Mbps.
“While in the previous 5G Experience report our T-Mobile users saw an impressive 93.9 Mbps faster speeds over users on other operators, this time T-Mobile scored over 98 Mbps ahead of its competitors,” Opensignal Principal Technical Analyst Francesco Rizzato noted.
Verizon and AT&T, however, also saw notable increases in download speeds as result of their C-band deployments, with Verizon’s score coming in at 72.8 Mbps — up from 56.2 Mbps in the previous report — while AT&T achieved a score of 53.6 Mbps, up from 49.1 Mbps.
“On Verizon the use of C-band helps to explain the double-digit improvement in its users’ 5G Download Speed this time compared with the Opensignal report six months ago,” Rizzato explained. “However, we saw a smaller change in AT&T users’ 5G experience because AT&T has opted for a smaller scale initial C-band launch compared with Verizon. It plans for a larger mid-band 5G deployment starting from Q2 — too late for the full impact to show in this report — in order to roll out both its C-band and also its newly acquired 3.45-3.55 GHz spectrum at the same time.”
When it comes to upload speeds, Verizon scored 14 Mbps, while AT&T achieved only 10 Mbps.
But speed isn’t the only area where T-Mobile’s 5G network shines. According to Opensignal, the carrier is also leading the way in 5G availability, with its users spending 40.6 per cent of the time on an active 5G connection. When compares to its competitors — 18.7 per cent for AT&T users and 10.6 per cent on Verizon — it’s clear that T-Mobile is dominating this category. Similarly, T-Mobile’s 5G Reach scored of 7.8 on a 10-point scale, which is more than two points ahead of its nearest rival AT&T (5.4 points).
“T-Mobile is not remaining idle and is continuing to advance the quality of its users’ 5G experience with rising 5G Download Speed and other measures,” said Rizzato. “This is a clear indication that the carrier is pushing ahead on its plans to expand both breadth and depth of its mid-band 2.5 GHz 5G network.” The analyst firm also highlighted the carrier’s launch of commercial Voice-over-5G in parts of Portland and Salt Lake City, a move it said will improve user experience on its existing Standalone (SA) 5G network.
