T-Mobile US had an average 5G download speed of 186.3 Mbps from September 16 to December 14, 2022
For the seventh consecutive time, Opensignal has declared that T-Mobile US has the fastest 5G download speeds in the United States, hitting an average of 186.3 Mbps, according to the firm’s latest 5G report. Comparatively, Verizon achieved an average 5G download speed of 84.9 Mbps and AT&T claimed an average speed of only 71.1 Mbps.
T-Mobile US also took home the top prize in Ookla’s 5G Availability category, with users connecting to 5G or better services 49.7% of the time — 2.4 times more than AT&T 5G users and 5.6 times more than Verizon 5G users. Additionally, T-Mo US had the best reach with a score of 8.3 on a 10-point scale and achieved an average 5G upload speed of 17.9 Mbps, beating Verizon’s 16.1 Mbps and AT&T’s 12.1 Mbps.
Despite T-Mobile’s continued lead, Ookla reported that AT&T and Verizon are narrowing the 5G speed gap thanks to their C-band deployments. Verizon, alone, spent $52.9 billion on C-band spectrum during the 2021 auction. That amount of money got Verizon 3,511 licenses in all of the 406 geographic Partial Economic Areas (PEA) that make up the United States. AT&T spent $23.4 billion for 1,621 licenses in 406 PEAs, T-Mobile US bought 142 licenses in 72 PEAs for $9.3 billion. When Verizon and AT&T activated their C-band 5G networks on January 19th 2022, the pair finally shook up the dynamic in which T-Mobile was the only U.S. carrier using large swaths of mid-band spectrum for 5G in the form of the 2.5 GHz spectrum that is got its hands on following the April 2020 acquisition of Sprint.
Verizon reclaimed its title as best 5G experiential metrics provider. Specifically, the carrier achieved the best score in the categories of 5G Video Experience, 5G Games Experience and 5G Voice Experience.
