The three major mobile carriers — AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon — all had positive results in Ookla “State of the Mobile Union” report for the second half of last year.
“Overall, network performance gaps among the nation’s three big mobile network operators continue to narrow,” Ookla Analyst Mike Dano said in a press release.
“That’s certainly what RootMetrics technicians found in the second half of 2025 as they drove 246,000 miles all over the U.S., testing cellular networks everywhere they went.
Performance highlights from the mobile report:
- AT&T won the award for network speed, call performance, and text performance.
- T-Mobile had the highest 5G availability at 95.2% and was cowinner in the speed category. It is still the only carrier to record median download speeds of at least 100 Mbps in all 125 markets and reached 200 Mbps in 124 of them.
- Verizon was the best performer in the second half of the year. It earned seven U.S. RootScore Awards, including the Overall RootScore Award for best overall network performance and the Reliability RootScore Award. Both of those were won by AT&T in the previous award cycle.
The results by category:
- Reliability: AT&T (first), Verizon (second), T-Mobile (third)
- Responsiveness: Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T
- Speed: AT&T and T-Mobile (statistical tie)
- Data: Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile
- Call quality: AT&T and Verizon (tie) and T-Mobile
- Texting: AT&T and Verizon (statistical tie) and T-Mobile
- Video quality: Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile (statistical tie)
The report found that T-Mobile dominated the median download speed at 374.5 Mbps. It was followed by Verizon at 226.5 Mbps and AT&T at 193.0 Mbps.
The report’s results tend to validate similar findings released earlier this month by Opensignal, which said T-Mobile was tops for reliability, experience, consistent quality, and access to 5G. Verizon was tops in video and AT&T for reliability.
