RootMetrics has come out with yet another report. This time instead of pitting each of the four US carriers against each other, it puts all of the metro areas in the nation against each other. And the top five markets might be a bit surprising to some. The market with the best overall mobile network is Lansing, Michigan, who actually has the 117th largest population in the nation. Lansing had an overall score of 98.5. That was followed by Indianapolis who had a score of 98.3, Modesto, California with a score of 98.2, Chicago, Illinois and Port St. Lucie, Florida which were tied for fourth place with a 98 score.
It’s important to talk about how RootMetrics ranks these metro areas. RootMetrics went to the top 125 most populated metro markets over the course of the first 6 months of 2017. And it tested network reliability, network speed, data speed, calls and texts, which all made up the overall performance score. The scores are based on an average taken from its tests on all four major US carriers – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Each of these networks are weighted by the percentage of customers it has in that metro market. For instance, if New York City has more Verizon customers than Sprint does, then Verizon’s score would factor more into the overall score for the city than Sprint, AT&T or T-Mobile’s would.
Throughout its testing, RootMetrics found that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean a better network. Out of the top 5 largest markets, only one of them were in the five best markets for mobile networks, which was Chicago, and it was tied for fourth. The two largest cities, New York City and Los Angeles respectively, ranked 74th and 77th out of 125, respectively. Which is pretty low, actually. The good thing here is that all 125 metro areas did get a score above 90, which means these mobile networks are actually fairly decent. While they may not be perfect in each of the 125 metro markets, they do offer some pretty good service. You can check out the full list from RootMetrics latest report by following the link in the source section below, and you can see where your city landed on the list.
RootMetrics 1H 2017 Metro Areas Report
