Leading U.S. wireless carriers routinely lay claim to providing the fastest service, most recently regarding new 4G LTE wireless services. But which actually does provide the fastest mobile broadband service? And which rates the highest in overall performance?
According to RootMetrics’ latest U.S. National RootScore Report it’s Verizon, which for the first time earned top honors in all six categories at the national level. AT&T tied with Verizon in Text Performance, and AT&T ran a close second in four of the remaining five categories: Network Speed, Network Reliability, Data Performance and Overall Performance.
Best Wireless Service
Sprint and T-Mobile showed improvement in mobile service in 2H 2015, enough to warrant RootMetrics saying they have the potential to be strong competitors to Verizon and AT&T in the coming year. Sprint didn’t win any RootScore awards at the national level, but it did beat out AT&T for second place in Call Performance.
T-Mobile won nine state-level awards this time around. T-Mobile also continued to improve at the metro level, specifically in the Network Speed and Network Reliability categories.
Other key takeaways from RootMetrics’ 2H’15 report include:
- Verizon earned the Overall RootScore Award for the fifth consecutive period;
- AT&T was the only carrier other than Verizon to win or share a National RootScore Award;
- T-Mobile surpassed Sprint in the Data Performance and Network Speed at the national level, taking the third spot;
- Sprint recorded median download speeds of 20 Mbps or better in 14 metro markets, surpassing AT&T;
U.S. wireless carriers continue to invest in additional network capacity and geographic coverage, particularly when it comes to 4G LTE, and they continue to upgrade infrastructure to improve reliability and service quality.
