Latest US Network Report Shows T-Mobile Sweeping Overall Experience Awards

A new US wireless network report dropped this week and it shows that not much has changed from the last report. In other words, T-Mobile is still showing that it’s early lead in 5G wasn’t something in would give up, while Verizon and AT&T are playing catch-up and winning select categories on their own.

The new report comes from OpenSignal as a quarterly report that tested out networks from September 2023 to December 2023. They put together several categories, the most important being Overall Experience, followed by 5G Experience, Coverage, and Consistency. Each of those major categories has several sub-categories that get more specific on wireless experiences and coverage.

In the Overall Experience category, T-Mobile won every single award. In the 5G Experience category, Verizon won every single award except for 5G download speeds, which T-Mobile won. AT&T took a single availability award in the Coverage category.

The OpenSignal report (here) talks in detail through each of the wins in these areas, but their main takeaways are as follows:

• T-Mobile wins 9 out of 15 awards, shows significant leads in 5G download speeds and 5G availability, and produced the best results in the consistency category.
• T-Mobile’s speeds are 2.5x AT&T’s and 3x Verizon’s on an overall network level.
• AT&T wins for general availability (99.5%) of 3G, 4G, and 5G network connections, but Verizon (99.2%) and T-Mobile (98.5%) are within a percentage point of them. T-Mobile’s 5G availability is at 64.3%, though, with AT&T at 14.8% and Verizon way down at 8.7%. Again, that 5G lead for T-Mobile is holding strong.
• Verizon wins in 5G upload speeds, as well as several other 5G categories, all of which were pretty close.

What should your takeaway be? It sure looks like T-Mobile’s 5G network, thanks to its mid-band network, is helping them give customers the best overall experience. There are obscure 5G experience areas that Verizon excels in, probably thanks to 5G mmW in select spots, but overall, T-Mobile appears to be king of the US wireless networks for the time being. AT&T is still very much playing catch-up, as it was in the middle of last year.