T-Mobile Dominates OpenSignal's Mobile Tests, But Verizon Remains Strong
OpenSignal recently published its August 2017 'State of Mobile Networks USA' report, and in it we see the results of its evaluation of the biggest carriers in the nation. While Verizon has a solid history of getting top marks in these sort of tests, T-Mobile has slipped ahead of it this time, managing to take the top slot in every category including latency and 4G performance.
The OpenSignal evaluation looks at performance on the networks belonging to Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T. In terms of the overall performance of these carriers in all six evaluation categories, T-Mobile won. Categories include the availability of 4G, download speed and latency on the 4G network, latency and download speeds on the 3G network, and download speeds overall.
In some cases, T-Mobile just barely slipped ahead of Verizon, such as in the category of 4G availability. In other cases, T-Mobile blew away all three other carriers, such as in its overall 3G availability (Verizon and Sprint were lowest in that category, in case you were wondering). The study didn't limit itself to just overall performance, however, also looking at regional 4G availability and performance.
In that case, T-Mobile is found on nearly every city evaluated, though it shared many of the 'winning slots' with other carriers. T-Mobile and Verizon both took top slot in the Atlanta/Sandy Springs/Roswell area, for example, while Verizon alone got Baltimore/Cambridge/Newton and T-Mobile alone got Philadelphia/Camden/Wilmington.
T-Mobile managed to take the winning slot in 25 instances in the regional evaluation; for comparison, Verizon took 24, A&T took 11, and Sprint took 4. Talking about this, OpenSignal said:
T-Mobile's clean sweep of awards in this report doesn't paint the full picture of the competitive situation in the U.S. A look at our city-by-city analysis of 4G availability and speed reveals just how close the war between Verizon and T-Mobile actually is. In each of the 32 cities we examined, either T-Mobile or Verizon ranked highest or were tied for first place in both our 4G availability and 4G speed metrics.
SOURCE: OpenSignal