OpenSignal has put out a report ranking the U.S.’ top fastest 4G cities, showing where 4G speeds are the going to be the quickest based on data about LTE speeds gathered between July and September of 2017. While 4G speeds are going to be pretty fast in a number of larger metropolitan areas around the country, OpenSignal’s ranking might surprise you. The fastest 4G city in the U.S. based on the report has a download speed of 21.5Mbps, and that city happens to Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the slowest 4G city being Las Vegas at just 11.65 Mbps. It’s important to keep in mind that the ranking list is only based on major cities and does not appear to take into account smaller cities or townships, though it’s also important to keep in mind that major cities are the most likely to have the fastest speeds.
Coming in at second place behind Minneapolis is Detroit with an average download speed of 20.77 Mbps, followed up by Seattle, Chicago, and St. Louis for third, fourth, and fifth place on the list with speeds of 19.06 Mbps, 18.19 Mbps, and 18.08 Mbps respectively. If you’re in the Portland Northwest, Portland didn’t make it into the top ten but that doesn’t mean that it’s extremely slow by any means. It’s ranked at number 12 on the list with an average download speed of 16.91 Mbps which is still pretty quick.
Overall OpenSignal tested 4G speeds in 35 different major metropolitan cities across the U.S., noting that there was a significantly noticeable difference between the fastest and slowest cities on their ranking list. The majority of the cities in the ranking also performed better than the national average of 4G speeds, which sits at 13.98 Mbps. According to OpenSignal’s tests, only 6 major U.S. cities fell below that, with the rest performing anywhere from marginally better to having a vast improvement. When compared to the worldwide LTE download speeds, which OpenSignal lists at 16.6 Mbps, 14 cities out of the 35 in today’s ranking report pass that mark, with anything below San Diego being slower. The ranking doesn’t mention anything about which carriers in any of these cities had what speeds, or which carriers performed the best in the top 4G cities that were ranked.