Generally speaking, the US is a good place to find a lot of awesome things. Pizza, for instance, is never far off. Unfortunately, according to a new report from OpenSignal, the US can’t exactly count fast 4G LTE speeds among the awesome things it offers. OpenSignal ranked a total of 16 countries on their average LTE speeds, and looking at the results, it immediately becomes clear that the US has a lot of catching up to do. The US came in at number 15, slightly ahead of the Philippines, but far outpaced by most of the other countries included in the report.
According to OpenSignal, users in the US experience an average LTE speed of 6.5Mbps – only a little bit faster than the Philippines’ average of 5.3Mbps. Meanwhile, 14th-ranked Japan showed averages of 11.8Mbps, which comes close to doubling the average in the US. By the time we arrive at first-ranked Australia, the average LTE speed has jumped to an impressive 24.5Mbps. For what it’s worth, the US ranked well when it came to LTE coverage, with OpenSignal reporting that users had access to LTE around 67% of the time. That was enough to put the US in sixth place in terms of coverage, with South Korea taking the top spot at 91%. While many may be expecting to hear that Verizon or AT&T have the fastest LTE network, it was actually T-Mobile taking that particular crown, topping US charts with a download speed of 11.5Mbps. AT&T came in second with a reported 9.12Mbps, Verizon settled at third with 7.82Mbps, and Sprint rounded out the rankings for the big four with only 4.32Mbps. It’s worth noting that Verizon and AT&T both fell into the “Good coverage and slow” quadrant of OpenSignal’s carrier report, while T-Mobile and Sprint were relegated to the “Poor coverage and slow” quadrant.
This first place ranking for T-Mobile just goes to show that the company’s LTE expansion strategy has been working. As exciting as this news is for T-Mobile customers, keep in mind that the carrier still has some catching up to do when it comes to coverage. Improvement seems to be a running theme throughout the entire report, as the US lags behind other countries in many respects. Let’s hope that changes soon, otherwise some of us might decide to risk coexisting alongside Australia’s horrifying fauna in exchange for some tasty LTE speeds.