With the start of a new year, some people may be thinking about changing their mobile carrier. Today a new report has been released that can help make that decision easier.
OpenSignal today released its State of Mobile Networks: USA report, which examines the networks of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The report utilizes 5.9 billion network measurements from 237,213 test devices which were taken from October 1, 2017 through December 30, 2017.
T-Mobile came out ahead of five of the six categories in OpenSignal's report, with AT&T claiming the sixth trophy. T-Mobile posted an average LTE download speed of 19.42Mbps while Verizon came in second with an average LTE download speed of 17.77Mbps. Meanwhile, AT&T came in third at 13.27Mbps and Sprint finished fourth at 12.02Mbps.
T-Mo also edged out Verizon in 4G availability, with its customers latching onto an LTE signal 93.14 percent of the time. Verizon customers found an LTE signal 92.72 percent of the time, while AT&T customers were on an LTE signal 87.03 percent of the time and Sprint customers found LTE 85.66 percent of the time.
Other categories in which T-Mobile won include average 3G download speed (3.46Mbps), average overall download speed (18.31Mbps), and 3G latency (109.41ms).
AT&T won an award for best 4G latency of 58.29ms. T-Mobile came in second at 59.74ms, Sprint was in third at 69.59ms, and Verizon rounded out the list at 69.99ms.
Also in OpenSignal's report is a look at the best 4G LTE availability, best 4G LTE download speed, and best 4G LTE latency in several major metro areas across the U.S.
OpenSignal notes that in the months after launching unlimited data plans, AT&T and Verizon's LTE speeds dropped. Those speeds stopped falling toward the end of 2017 as the carriers made upgrades to their network, and Verizon even began posting increased LTE speeds. That gave T-Mobile time to leap ahead and post the fastest LTE speeds, though, and T-Mo will continue to improve its network in 2018. We'll have to see if AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon can do the same and close the gap with T-Mo.