T-Mo touts its towers, spectrum position and tech as enabling Best Network win
T-Mobile US credited its spectrum position, 5G Standalone roll-out and its tower count as the reasons for its network improvements that have been years in the making, most recently confirmed with Ookla’s Best Network award.
CEO Mike Sievert, speaking from an event at T-Mobile’s 5G Hub this week, called Ookla’s work the “most exhaustive network test in U.S. history,” involving six months of testing across the fourth quarter of 2024 and first quarter of 2025, collecting half a billion data points across millions of devices and assessing numerous aspects of the customer experience in order to declare a Best Network winner.
For those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of network testing, Sievert took a bit of time to differentiate between the type of crowd-sourced, app-based testing that Ookla conducted, and drive-test-based network evaluations.
“Drive tests look at 50 users. 50 users, driving around in cars. In fact, drive tests are often sponsored by the carriers, and so they’re driving around in cars … in a way that’s consistent with the carrier’s expectations,” Sievert told the crowd at the 5G Hub. “So obviously these things are very, very different.”
He continued: “I don’t want to discount drive tests too much, they have a role. We look at the data. It’s important data for any operator to understand weak spots, how to tune up the network, where are dropped calls happening. Drive tests have a role. They’re important. But they are not a comprehensive way, across every corner of this country, to determine who’s the best network. And that’s what we are claiming today, on the heels of the largest test ever.”
COO Srini Gopalan said that due to the network density that T-Mobile US has, plus its spectrum holdings and its network technology choices, T-Mobile US has a network lead of “a good two years” on Verizon and AT&T. “That lead is only going to expand. This is only going to get better,” he added.
While T-Mobile US has emphasized its “layer cake” spectrum approach for years, Gopalan pointed out that within the different spectrum types, T-Mobile US has put together a particularly advantageous spectrum position—not only in the volume of spectrum that it has, but in the relative position of its holdings compared to other operators. In the low-band airwaves, for example, T-Mobile US has 600 MHz compared to other carriers’ 700 MHz and 850 MHz. In the midband, it bought Sprint’s wealth of 2.5 GHz, while AT&T and Verizon are relying on the C-Band spectrum at 3.7 GHz.
T-Mo also spotlighted its T-Satellite Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) service in partnership with LEO provider Starlink, which has been in beta mode since early this year but will officially switch to a commercial service as of July 23. Read more details on the lessons learned from the beta service here.
In other test news:
–Spirent Communications has launched a new test platform, its Landslide E20 Over-the-Air (OTA) solution that automates interactions with handsets in the lab. The company said that the Landslide E20 is the only offering of its kind that offers carrier-grade automation and visibility into actual handset behavior, while also being scalable to support “hundreds of devices simultaneously.”
The platform’s features include customizable scripting and remote user interface control, realistic multi-app usage like being able to have video streaming and voice calls run simultaneously, support for dual SIM scenarios and API/SDK-based automation that is immune to UI changes, according to Spirent.
“Ongoing evolution of 5G, Wi-Fi offload strategies, and new handset and OS releases demand an automated, repeatable approach to testing in realistic conditions,” said Anil Kollipara, VP of product management at Spirent. “Our Landslide E20 OTA solution delivers full-stack visibility and real-world accuracy, validating services under true user conditions. This platform uncovers performance issues others miss, with scalable testing across devices, OS updates, and mobility scenarios.”
–Viavi Solutions’ remote fiber test system (RFTS) notched a customer win with “alternative network” or alt-net provider Netomnia, the second-largest alt-net operating in the U.K. Netomnia will use Viavi’s ONMSi RFTS to streamline its network installation as well as to support ongoing maintenance.
Along with fellow alt-net providers YouFibre and brsk, Netomnia has 325,000 connected premises and 2.5 million serviceable locations, with a target of 5 million serviceable locations by the end of 2027. Netomnia will use Viavi’s ONMSi RFTS to streamline its network installation as well as to support ongoing maintenance. According to Viavi, the network operator will be using a mobile app to use the solution’s remote test-on-demand capability for end-to-end-certification testing as the network is built out.
Netomnia will use a mobile app to leverage the ONMSi remote test-on-demand capability to perform end-to-end certification testing during the build stages. In addition, using reflector-less features, network health and performance will be monitored all the way through the premises’ optical network terminals (ONTs).
“The remote fiber test system is a critical element in enabling us to reach our ambitious goal to deploy a high-quality network covering five million premises and over 150 exchanges by the end of 2027,” said Jeremy Chelot, Group CEO for Netomnia, YouFibre and brsk.
–Liquid Instruments has released the fourth-generation of its reconfigurable hardware platform, Moku:Delta. The software-defined instrument has 15 integrated instrument capabilities, including spectrum analysis, waveform generation and an oscilloscope, with eight independent input and output channels to run instruments simultaneously, and support for 32 independent digital I/O channels.
Liquid Instruments said that the platform can support more than 2 billion possible instrument configurations and is well-suited for quantum experiments, aerospace and defense applications and semiconductor design.
-Testing and certification giant Bureau Veritas is reorganizing its internal structures as part of its Leap | 28 strategy. It will fold its current six geographic operating regions into four: the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East Caspian & Africa.
The company’s product lines will be managed under three areas across those regions: Industrials and Commodities, Urbanization and Assurance and Consumer Products Services, with each area managed by an executive committee member.
“This new organization will leverage scale, benefit from a well-defined structure, thus speeding up decision making, performance impact, and innovation,” said Bureau Veritas CEO Hinda Gharbi.
-Test house Intertek is now offering what it says is the world’s first independent end-to-end AI assurance program, dubbed Intertek AI². The program is based on examining AI through the lenses of governance, transparency, security and safety.
