Ookla has just published its latest market report revealing where U.S. mobile carriers and smartphone manufacturers stand in terms of providing the best 5G and 4G/LTE services.
T-Mobile also recently played another ace it was holding, repurposing some older 1.9GHz PCS spectrum to add an additional layer to its Ultra Capacity 5G service. These 1.9GHz frequencies were once used by T-Mobile’s predecessor, VoiceStream Wireless PCS, to provide 2G and 3G services, but as more customers move to 5G-capable devices and 3G networks ride off into the sunset, they’ve become ideal for carrying 5G to the masses.
AT&T was just behind Verizon for overall download speeds, clocking in at 65.57Mbps, up from 54.64Mbps in the quarter before, but its median 5G download speeds remain pretty disappointing, increasing only 5% to 85.39Mbps from the previous 81.22Mbps measurement. Meanwhile, T-Mobile has been putting its eggs in more than one basket. Its midband 5G network was up and running well ahead of the rest thanks to the 2.5GHz spectrum it acquired from its 2020 merger with Sprint. T-Mobile subsequently dropped $9.3 billion in the 2021 C-band auction with the intention of using some of that 3.7GHz to 3.98GHz spectrum to supplement its 2.5GHz network to provide coverage in denser population centers. Now it’s using the aforementioned 1.
By contrast, the slowest state was Mississippi, with an overall median download speed of 34.05Mbps. T-Mobile appears to offer a considerable advantagethere with speeds of 95.56Mbps.