Verizon Dethroned as Fastest Wireless Carrier in US

In the latest US wireless carrier showdown, a new king has been crowned. Verizon is no longer the fastest carrier, as AT&T has eclipsed them for the first time in five years.

This news comes out of PCMag, who released their “Fastest Mobile Networks” report this morning for the 10th year in a row. With a top overall score of 97, AT&T appears to be the clear winner. Verizon came in 2nd with a score of 94, while T-Mobile and Sprint trailed with scores of 91 and 82, respectively.

To put together these scores, PCMag drove all over the country, from city to city and state to state, running some 60,000 speedtests in the process on Galaxy S10 phones.

Of those tests, along with the nationwide win, the data shows AT&T winning or tying in 15 of 30 cities tested, plus winning or tying in every rural region. They also walked away with wins in the northeast, north central, northwest, and southwest regional areas, with the other two going to Verizon (south central) and T-Mobile (southeast).

To get scores that lead to wins, a combination of tested items are used to find an average. Things like max and average download speeds, percentage of time above 5Mbps downloads, upload speeds, ping, and reliability are all looked at. AT&T may not have won every single individual category, but their averages topped everyone, thanks to a steady stream of network upgrades over the past year.

There is a lot more data in this report, so I urge you to jump through that link below to see it. If anything, there are individual city scores for the 30 cities they looked at. This should give you an idea as to which carrier might be best for you if you have been considering a switch. Then again, PCMag’s numbers show Sprint as the king of Portland and I’m not about to make that move.

// PCMag