The latest ‘State of Mobile Networks report for the US’ from OpenSignal concerns itself with both the availability and speed of LTE signals from the four major US carriers – Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. Once again, Verizon finds itself firmly in the number one seat, and Sprint is sitting at the back of the class. The study divides the US into five zones – the West, Midwest, Northeast, Southwest, and South East. Within each zone, OpenSignal examined the 4G LTE Availability and the 4G LTE Speed of each of the four networks. In summary, Verizon won LTE Availability in all five regions, and for LTE Speed, Verizon won in the West, Midwest, and tied with T-Mobile in the Southwest. T-Mobile took the LTE Speed trophy in the Northeast and Southeast.
Delving deeper into the findings, we can see from the graphs below that as far as availability goes, T-Mobile finished second in all regions, although they were neck-and-neck with AT&T in the Southwest region. AT&T came in a strong third in the other four regions and Sprint was a distant fourth in all areas. Like their commercial states – they are only 1-percent less reliable than Verizon – but it does not state they have a more available or faster network. Verizon users in the Midwest can grab a signal 89.2-percent of the time, and in the Northeast region, T-Mobile users pulled in a signal 87.1-percent of the time. AT&T had their best signal in the Southwest where 84.8-percent of customers could get a signal. Sprint also did their best in the Southwest area where 78.8-percent of the time a signal was possible. The Southeast region was a sore spot for all of the carriers except AT&T where the lowest scores were observed.
When it comes to speed, Verizon and T-Mobile won the most regions – the Midwest and West showed Verizon squeaking out the lead, both are tied in the Southwest, and T-Mobile barely won in the Northeast and Southeast. AT&T was steady across the board with their best speeds in the Midwest and Northeast. Again, Sprint was consistently below the other carriers when it comes to LTE speeds. Verizon has its fastest speed, 20 Mbps LTE download, in the Midwest, T-Mobile averaged more than 18 Mbps across the board, AT&T’s best speeds of 15.2 Mbps were in the Northeast, and Sprint’s best of 10.7 Mbps were in the Midwest.
