In fact, this week, both AT&T and Verizon are expected to begin rolling out their new C-band spectrum, which runs in the same mid-band frequencies that have been driving T-Mobile’s fastest speeds, so it’s fair to say that things are about to get a lot more interesting. This has given T-Mobile a solid lead, and although these latest reports suggest that it’s expanding that lead, it’s fair to say that this won’t last forever. It was the first carrier to boast coverage in all 50 states, and also had a leg up on delivering faster mid-band 5G spectrum, thanks to its merger with Sprint in 2020. Meanwhile, T-Mobile’s focus from the beginning was on expanding its coverage as wide and far as possible.

As it began rolling out its Nationwide 5G, using a much lower-frequency sub-6GHz spectrum that was shared with its 4G LTE service, the slower performance on that side pulled down its overall average. The only problem was that most users weren’t able to enjoy these speeds.Īt the time, Verizon only had its mmWave network, so naturally, its raw 5G speeds were the fastest, even if they were only available to a small percentage of its customers. A report by OpenSignal early last year reported speeds in excess of 500Mbps on Verizon’s 5G network. This originally earned it very high scores for raw 5G speeds. The carrier focused on deploying fast, short-range mmWave technology in major urban centers. Verizon’s lower numbers for 5G availability are likely due to its choice to go for speed over coverage in its original 5G rollouts. AT&T came in second at 48%, while Verizon lagged behind at 36.4%. For 5G availability, which measures the percentage of users on 5G-capable devices that spend the majority of their time on 5G, T-Mobile was the only carrier to soar past the halfway mark, at 61.4%. T-Mobile also came out ahead in latency and consistency, although the margins were much closer here. There was an even larger gap when it came to 5G performance, with T-Mobile’s 187.12Mbps eclipsing both Verizon and AT&T, which failed to break the 100Mbps barrier at all, clocking in at 78.52Mbps and 68.82Mpbs, respectively. AT&T came in second place with median download speeds of 49.25 Mbps, and Verizon was a close third at 44.67Mbps in overall cellular speed numbers. Looking at Ookla’s numbers, it’s clear that this wasn’t even a close race.

Speedtest 5g map