In today’s wireless ecosystem, it is common for people to think that the two giants of the industry, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, would be fighting it out to claim the title of the best in the business. This assumption is correct. AT&T and Verizon have been in a battle of claims for quite a while now, attempting to convince consumers that they have superior network speed and reliability relative to the other. Traditionally, AT&T has claimed the highest speed, while Verizon has been the most dependable network available. However, as AT&T boosts its reliability, things look like they are starting to change. Based on a recent study done by Root Metrics, AT&T can keep the speed title. They either won or tied with their competitors in 90 markets sampled, while Verizon can only say the same for 65 markets. In the reliability side of things, Verizon still has that crown as well, winning or tying in 102 markets as compared to AT&T’s 68. In that reliability test, there is a subset for speed, which AT&T won handily yet again, winning or tying in 92 markets versus 26 to Verizon.
By the Root Metrics test, AT&T has the ‘best network’, as their speed is far superior to Verizon, and their reliability is improving. On the other hand, T-Mobile, who has recently been rather vocal about their speeds, won (not tied) 16 markets in that respective category, which is just one shy of Verizon. While T-Mobile’s claims that their speeds are growing extremely quickly are accurate from a strictly data perspective, their claims do not take into account phone calls and text messaging, as they use Speedtest.net as the basis for their claims. Overall, this coming year should serve to be a rather interesting one with respect to wireless networks. As AT&T and Verizon continue to hash it out over who has the best service, they also should probably keep an eye on T-Mobile. As Verizon has recently added an addition of spectrum to their service bands that is only compatible with about a fifth of smartphones out there, and T-Mobile is looking to start dishing out Wideband LTE, this coming year looks to be an interesting time for wireless development.
Finally, we have Sprint, who barely won anything in the study. However, Sprint has been talking a lot about Sprint Spark, which may or may not be enough to bring them back into the game. Hopefully, all this competition will give us the consumers, the best deals and the best service, and the best wireless experience that we could hope for.