T-Mobile has fastest 5G speeds with widest availability in the US

AppleInsider

An industry report shows T-Mobile is the top mobile carrier in 5G download speed and widespread availability across the US.

mmWave 5G provides high speeds, but isn't widely available

Apple's iPhone 12 lineup is capable of 5G speeds, which has been a big selling point for the devices. The high-bandwidth wireless technology allows for near gigabit internet speeds when ideal conditions are met.

According to an Opensignal study, shared by 9to5Mac, T-Mobile has been leading other carriers in terms of download speed and availability across the US. However, the superior mmWave 5G technology is rarely used by T-Mobile customers.

T-Mobile wins out in categories that affect more average users. Image source: Opensignal

The study revealed that while T-Mobile had a higher percentage of customers connected to 5G with faster speeds when connected, other services may provide superior experiences. The voice, video, and gaming experiences were deemed better on Verizon and AT&T than T-Mobile, despite the bandwidth and availability of T-Mobile 5G.

Download and upload speed results provided by Opensignal

The download speed of T-Mobile reached 87.5 Mbps, up from 71.3 Mbps in the April report. These speeds are expected when using the more-widely-spread sub-6GHz 5G service, while mmWave 5G will enable connections closer to gigabit speeds in ideal situations.

The mmWave 5G speed test showed T-Mobile averaged 312 Mbps while Verizon nearly doubled this at 618.4 Mbps. Availability of mmWave 5G is highly dependent on event locations like sports stadiums or convention centers.

Due to this availability limitation, only about 0.2% of T-Mobile users connected to mmWave 5G during the quarter. Therefore, the sub-6GHz 5G availability and speed will be more impactful to the average user -- which are T-Mobile's strengths.

T-Mobile merged with Sprint in an attempt to compete with Verizon and AT&T. So far, the effort seems to be working as it continues to expand availability and download speed at a faster rate than its rivals.

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GeorgeBMac

This makes sense:   it seemed that T-Mobile focused on serving customers out in the suburban and rural areas while AT&T and Verizon like the more directly profitable urban areas and, especially Verizon, emphasized its glitzy mm-Wave.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.   Around me Verizon owns the telephone poles in my area.   They could easily mount a mm-wave 5G transmitter on every pole and out do both T-Mobile and Comcast cable.

neilm

This seems like one of those surveys designed so that every child at the party gets a present.
Crap coverage? No problem, but if you do manage to get some 5G, how's the "experience"?

BTW, T-Mobile got a whole bunch of spectrum from their merger with Sprint. This much improved their previously lackluster coverage (not just 5G). Now Vz and AT&T will have to pony up at the next spectrum auction.

charlesn

The conclusions about "better experience" make ZERO sense. T-Mobile has SEVENTY PERCENT better download speeds vs Verizon/ATT, plus the best upload speeds, too, AND the widest 5G availability... but somehow the companies with radically slower speeds and more limited 5G availability deliver a "better experience" -- whatever THAT means -- for audio, video and gaming?! We all realize that's a baseless, stupid conclusion, right? And, listen: I have Verizon service in NYC, so I'm no T-Mobile fanboy, but you have to call out ridiculous when you see it. As for the mythical mmWave flavor of 5G, I'll probably spot a unicorn before I see the 5G UW symbol on my 12 Pro Max. Manhattan is arguably the mmWave capital of the country right now, and I have yet to connect to it even once in 9 months of usage. 99.9% of the public should not give a rat's butt about mmWave 5G. 

pulseimages

Doesn’t the battery life really take a hit when using 5G? 

lkrupp

Still don’t understand why a smartphone needs 5G speeds. Home broadband, yes; smartphone no. 

prokip

Just checked my home broadband.  NOT mmWave!

Nokia 5G-24W-A modem on high window sill, 1.3 kms line-of-site to tower.

libertyforall

lkrupp said:

Still don’t understand why a smartphone needs 5G speeds. Home broadband, yes; smartphone no. 

Lower latency is always a better experience.  Plus getting data on & off a network faster is better and frees up connections.

MplsP

libertyforall said:

lkrupp said:

Still don’t understand why a smartphone needs 5G speeds. Home broadband, yes; smartphone no. 

Lower latency is always a better experience.  Plus getting data on & off a network faster is better and frees up connections.

 But the latency has as much about the backbone infrastructure as it is the last hop from the tower, and there's very few things that are truly dependent on ultra low latency.

lkrupp said:

Still don’t understand why a smartphone needs 5G speeds. Home broadband, yes; smartphone no. 

Yeah, I tried asking that question in a 5G thread last year. The answers I got consisted of "because it's the future!" "low latency lets you do remote surgery" "increase connections allow for autonomous cars" and other irrelevant uses. 

Essentially, fast download speeds are nice, but *good* LTE speed can stream a HD movie, so it's more than adequate for what 99% of people need. The industry has pushed 5G as 'the next big thing' to convince everyone to buy new equipment but until there are actual uses for smart phones that require the added capabilities it's mainly bragging rights. There are also benefits to the industry, but we don't see those directly.

There have been many times in the past year when lower latencies would have been nice for my kids' music lessons over zoom, but that was on home wifi, going back to my point about latency being dependent on infrastructure.

One possible benefit of 5G is better coverage and more efficient use of spectrum. This is more difficult to quantify, though and I haven't seen anything definite about it.

davgreg

Switched from AT&T to T-Mobile in June bringing my iPhone 12 Pro along. I have been less than impressed with the speeds, coverage or consistency of the network.

Rather than switch back, I have added a built in AT&T hotspot to my car with unlimited LTE data that can patch the holes in the T-Mobile network with Wi-Fi calling. I frequently drive in areas well away from the cities and Interstate corridors where T-Mobile has long been good and saw it to be full of holes. Since I work in the medical field and pull call, I have to drive in bad weather and having a highly reliable cell signal is necessary.

T-Mobile says they are hard at work flipping Sprint towers to T-Mobile and upgrading and rationalizing its network, but I assure you that the coverage maps they offer for both 4G LTE and 5G are wishful thinking. I am going to give them a chance to improve and if they do not, I will be going back to AT&T. I got a heavily discounted year on the AT&T mobile hotspot in my car and I hopefully will not need it by the time the year I prepaid for expires.

GeorgeBMac

davgreg said:

Switched from AT&T to T-Mobile in June bringing my iPhone 12 Pro along. I have been less than impressed with the speeds, coverage or consistency of the network.

Rather than switch back, I have added a built in AT&T hotspot to my car with unlimited LTE data that can patch the holes in the T-Mobile network with Wi-Fi calling. I frequently drive in areas well away from the cities and Interstate corridors where T-Mobile has long been good and saw it to be full of holes. Since I work in the medical field and pull call, I have to drive in bad weather and having a highly reliable cell signal is necessary.

T-Mobile says they are hard at work flipping Sprint towers to T-Mobile and upgrading and rationalizing its network, but I assure you that the coverage maps they offer for both 4G LTE and 5G are wishful thinking. I am going to give them a chance to improve and if they do not, I will be going back to AT&T. I got a heavily discounted year on the AT&T mobile hotspot in my car and I hopefully will not need it by the time the year I prepaid for expires.

It sounds like you already have it as good as you're going to get it:  BOTH T-Mobile AND AT&T -- at least while you're in your car.

And yeh, as a psych nurse working with those with severe & persistent mental illness, I know what you're going through:  Middle of the night calls to strange places.  Fortunately I covered a heavily urbanized county so coverage was not a problem -- but without GPS & maps i would have never gotten to where I needed to be.

mpantone

lkrupp said:

Still don’t understand why a smartphone needs 5G speeds. Home broadband, yes; smartphone no. 

Needs and wants are two different words.

I'm guessing you are old and you don't stream live video from your smartphone. A lot of kids do. There's also stuff like uploading 4K video. iPhones -- like many other smartphone brands -- has offered 4K video recording for years. Note that a lot of YouTubers have been shooting, editing and uploading 4K video from their smartphones FOR YEARS. Last year Apple started offering Dolby Vision on the iPhone 12 Pro models.

The old paradigm of taking your phone home, plugging into your computer to transfer video and firing up a desktop video editing application before finally using your terrestrial broadband Internet connection is obsolete.

Perhaps more important the mobile operators want more of their users to switch to 5G networks which handle more connections than 4G. It's not just about speed, it's also about congestion.

This is particularly important in high-density places like sports arenas, stadiums, public landmarks, public transportation hubs. While a ten-second Twitter or Instagram might not seem like a lot of data, multiply that by 60,000 spectators at some event and that's A LOT of data.

And there's nothing new about this. This was the same thing when 3G migrated to 4G LTE. People started shooting 1080p video. More people were posting photographs taken with devices that were generating more pixels and larger file sizes. And people like you said the same thing back then.

So yes, there are usage cases outside of your bubble world. It's not 2011.

And guess what? This will happen again. Mobile devices will start shooting 8K video one day, mobile networks will need to build more capacity. And for sure when 6G rolls around there will be someone like you asking the same question just like you did today, just like others did years ago.

Heck, maybe you were one of those people twenty years ago who said that no one needs a mobile telephone.

nicholfd

charlesn said:

The conclusions about "better experience" make ZERO sense. T-Mobile has SEVENTY PERCENT better download speeds vs Verizon/ATT, plus the best upload speeds, too, AND the widest 5G availability... but somehow the companies with radically slower speeds and more limited 5G availability deliver a "better experience" -- whatever THAT means -- for audio, video and gaming?! We all realize that's a baseless, stupid conclusion, right? And, listen: I have Verizon service in NYC, so I'm no T-Mobile fanboy, but you have to call out ridiculous when you see it. As for the mythical mmWave flavor of 5G, I'll probably spot a unicorn before I see the 5G UW symbol on my 12 Pro Max. Manhattan is arguably the mmWave capital of the country right now, and I have yet to connect to it even once in 9 months of usage. 99.9% of the public should not give a rat's butt about mmWave 5G. 

Latency - I have devices with AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile (AT&T & T-Mobile 5G on an iPad Pro, Verizon on an iPhone 12).  T-Mobile has the fastest speeds, but the WORST latencies.  Latency is VERY noticeable. AT&T (in my area) has the best latency, and the middle road speeds (still VERY fast).  Verizon is my last choice -  no 5G in this area, and mediocre speed & poor latency.

GeorgeBMac

mpantone said:

lkrupp said:

Still don’t understand why a smartphone needs 5G speeds. Home broadband, yes; smartphone no. 

Needs and wants are two different words.

I'm guessing you are old and you don't stream live video from your smartphone. A lot of kids do. There's also stuff like uploading 4K video. iPhones -- like many other smartphone brands -- has offered 4K video recording for years. Note that a lot of YouTubers have been shooting, editing and uploading 4K video from their smartphones FOR YEARS. Last year Apple started offering Dolby Vision on the iPhone 12 Pro models.

The old paradigm of taking your phone home, plugging into your computer to transfer video and firing up a desktop video editing application before finally using your terrestrial broadband Internet connection is obsolete.

Perhaps more important the mobile operators want more of their users to switch to 5G networks which handle more connections than 4G. It's not just about speed, it's also about congestion.

This is particularly important in high-density places like sports arenas, stadiums, public landmarks, public transportation hubs. While a ten-second Twitter or Instagram might not seem like a lot of data, multiply that by 60,000 spectators at some event and that's A LOT of data.

And there's nothing new about this. This was the same thing when 3G migrated to 4G LTE. People started shooting 1080p video. More people were posting photographs taken with devices that were generating more pixels and larger file sizes. And people like you said the same thing back then.

So yes, there are usage cases outside of your bubble world. It's not 2011.

And guess what? This will happen again. Mobile devices will start shooting 8K video one day, mobile networks will need to build more capacity. And for sure when 6G rolls around there will be someone like you asking the same question just like you did today, just like others did years ago.

Heck, maybe you were one of those people twenty years ago who said that no one needs a mobile telephone.

It seems that the biggest advances in computing have come from communications.   But people tend to take that for granted and obsess over clock speeds and such.  Meanwhile, computing functions tend to slowly fill the new capacities created by communication advances.

One of the first areas that will be upgraded once 5G is wide spread are the uploads & downloads an iPhone that are held back until the phone is connected to WiFi.   Cellular communications will be upgraded to be more on par with those of cable.