OpenSignal periodically releases a new ‘State of LTE’ report, which shows us how the carriers in our country compare to those around the world. Their report just came out today, and it’s quite telling. Especially for the US. You can check out the full report by heading to the source links below. OpenSignal gets their data for this report from their OpenSignal app that’s available on iOS and Android. It’s a great tool to use to see unbiased coverage maps, as they are not funded by any of the carriers.
As far as speeds go, Singapore topped out at 24Mbps, with Chile coming in second at 20Mbps. The US came in towards the bottom with an average of 7Mbps for all five of its networks (that includes AT&T, Cricket, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon). That’s a slight change from the last report, where the US was averaging about 6Mbps. Breaking it down by network, TDC Mobile of Denmark had the fastest speed at 28Mbps on average. With MTN Iran coming dead last at 2Mbps.
For the US, the networks broke down with Cricket being dead last at 3Mbps, Sprint at 5Mbps, followed by AT&T at 8Mbps, Verizon at 9Mbps and T-Mobile coming in at the top with 10Mbps. In the UK, O2 came in last at 8Mbps, with Vodafone and 3 at 10Mbps, and EE at the top with 16Mbps on average. Over in Canada, Rogers came in at 12Mbps, with Bell and Telus at 15Mbps on average.
Another metric that OpenSignal shows is the “time on LTE” which shows how long users are typically connected to these carriers’ LTE network. It’s useful information as it shows how often users are dropping to 3G or worse, EDGE networks. South Korea led this metric with 95% of the time being connected to LTE. Argentina came in last at 30. While the US had 78, Canada at 76, and the UK at 42. For the US, Verizon led the way with 87%, followed by AT&T at 83%, T-Mobile at 78%, Cricket at 73% and Sprint at 65%.
Pretty interesting numbers here, and as we stated above, you can read the full report from the links below.