If you follow wireless, auto or a smattering of other industries they operate in, you’re likely at least passingly familiar with consumer ratings board J.D. Power. In the wireless circle, J.D. Power does things like annual network performance rankings, overall satisfaction rankings and customer service satisfaction rankings. Among the Big Four in the United States, being T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, J.D. Power normally publishes a separate ranking from the rest of the wireless carriers out there for each category. For the ranking, the United States is broken up into five regions. A grand total of 41,400 subscribers across the United States were asked about network issues, which are represented as problems per 100 connections, or pp100.
For the Northeast, Verizon scores the win with a fairly tame 10 PP100, setting the bar at 12 for the regional average. T-Mobile was next in line with 14, the Sprint and AT&T tied at 15. In the Mid-Atlantic region, Verizon pulled out another win at 9, with AT&T next at 11, which was the regional average. From there, Sprint and T-Mobile tied with 13. For the Southeast, Verizon defended their championship with another 9-pointer, while Sprint sat at the regional average of 12. T-Mobile got 13 and AT&T rounded things out with 14. Verizon scored another 9 in the North Central region, where they had the biggest lead – the nearest competitors, AT&T and Sprint, sat on the average at 12. T-Mobile took last place in the region with 14. In the Southwest, Verizon scored yet another 9, tailed by AT&T at 11, then Sprint at 13, just beneath the average of 12. T-Mobile got last place again with 14. Finally, in the West, Verizon scored another 9, giving them the gold across the board. Meanwhile, everybody else fell below the regional average of 12. Sprint got 13, T-Mobile got 14 and AT&T got 15.
With Verizon topping the charts across the States, J.D. Power’s rankings make it quite clear who has the most reliable network at the moment, at least via user reporting. The panel of 41,400 users was polled in between July and December of 2015, leaving a decent time gap between the results and now, in which carriers could have improved a bit. Verizon, for example, was beaten at their own game when T-Mobile’s metrics showed them being schooled at Super Bowl 50 after dropping $70 million into network efforts. To top it off, with the upcoming spectrum auction and the start of widespread 5G testing, 2016 and onward could be anybody’s game.