Fastest Mobile Networks 2019-2020
All four major wireless carriers in the US are constantly flinging claims at you—they're the fastest, the largest, the friendliest, the best. So 10 years ago, we decided to put those claims to the test. Every year since then, with the carriers' cooperation, we strap phones into a set of cars and send them across the country with our staff members behind the wheels, scooping up data for several weeks to see who has the fastest and most reliable smartphone data network.
Verizon had a good run for the past five years with its nationwide LTE network, but AT&T has rocketed into the top spot this year. What the carrier calls 5G Evolution may not be 5G, but it's definitely a stride toward it. The big push to improve its 4G LTE network in preparation for 5G pays off big time for AT&T; it's America's fastest mobile network in 2019.
2019 Results at a Glance
Our awards balance speed and reliability, and for 10 years, the winner has flipped between AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile spent a few years getting really fast, but never quite matched up to Verizon on coverage and reliability.
Although it's always been strong in some parts of the country (mostly the Southeast), AT&T seems to have backed away from being a smartphone-focused carrier over the past few years. Its phone subscriptions have been flat or slightly declining since 2015, while its number of connected non-phone subscribers, with gadgets like smart cars, has skyrocketed, as you can see in the charts below from Statista.
But AT&T needs 5G, for a lot of reasons. And it turns out that a key step toward 5G requires improving your 4G network. AT&T's initial 5G network uses short-distance millimeter wave airwaves, so to prevent its 5G customers from feeling like they're falling off a cliff where there's no 5G service, it needed to turn up the quality of its 4G. And so it did.
AT&T has also secretly been helped by improvements in smartphone modems over the past two years. Wireless spectrum forms the lanes on which all smartphone traffic travels, and AT&T has more LTE spectrum than T-Mobile or Verizon, according to Fierce Wireless. But AT&T's spectrum is typically highly fragmented, coming in many small pieces rather than a few large chunks. New modems are better able to aggregate a lot of small channels into one fast connection, which is working to AT&T's advantage.
You can experience AT&T's best-in-class network through a few different companies, and our readers like some of them more than the mainline AT&T brand. Our Readers' Choice awards rate wireless carriers based on a survey of what readers think about factors including price, phone selection, and customer service. Consumer Cellular, which uses AT&T's network, ranked at the top this year, with spectacular ratings for low prices and customer service. Cricket, which is owned by AT&T and uses AT&T's network, also ranked higher than its parent company. You can explore what our readers think of their carriers here.
Where's the 5G?
We've been testing wireless networks for 10 years, and they keep getting better. AT&T's win doesn't mean that T-Mobile or Verizon have worse networks than last year—all four major networks improved on both speed and reliability. It's just that AT&T improved more than the others
This will be our last 4G-only test, since 5G isn't quite ready for testing (or for widespread usage) this year. Each of the four carriers has announced very limited coverage in a few cities. The 5G situation is changing fast, so we're tracking it monthly with our Race to 5G, and you can find out more in our story on the current state of 5G.
But the vast majority of people will be using 4G for several years to come. Only 14 million Americans will have 5G by the end of 2020—that's compared with 400 million wireless connections in the US in 2017. So although 5G gets a lot of buzz, and it's fun to talk about, 4G is how you're going to be getting your mobile internet for years to come.
Regional and National Winners
Nationwide Winner: AT&T
For the first time in five years, AT&T is the nation's fastest mobile network. AT&T won or tied in 15 of our 30 cities, along with winning or tying in every rural region. The carrier has always had great coverage, but its 5G Evolution upgrades this year helped it vault upward in terms of download speeds, breaking through most especially in the western US.
Verizon, the previous longtime winner, continued to be strong in the Northeast, winning or tying 12 cities or regions. T-Mobile took seven awards, and Sprint got one win and a tie. Sprint had the best download speeds in nine cities, though; it just kept getting dinged on the other parts of our scoring algorithm.
Northeast: AT&T
There's always a weird one like this. Verizon won or tied four of our six Northeast awards, AT&T won or tied two, and T-Mobile won one, but when we averaged all of the scores out, AT&T won. This is largely because when Verizon won, it did so by small amounts, but AT&T's win in Philadelphia was far more commanding than any of the other differences between scores. So the big win in Philly more than balanced out small losses elsewhere.
That said, as you can see, it's nearly a tie between AT&T and Verizon. Verizon won more cities by smaller amounts. Verizon did better in Connecticut and New Jersey; AT&T did better in Virginia.
Southeast: T-Mobile
This one divided pretty neatly geographically. Traveling through the Carolinas, AT&T owns the place, no question. But when we got to Florida, T-Mobile was better. In Georgia, well, Verizon won in Atlanta, and Sprint had the highest download speeds throughout the state. Averaging all of this out had our T-Mobile results come out slightly higher largely because of better upload speeds.
North Central: AT&T
AT&T won three cities in this region, T-Mobile won two, and Verizon won one, with AT&T coming out on top at the end. T-Mobile's win in Chicago largely came from the fact that we hit a T-Mobile LAA site, a high-speed urban technology designed to speed up connections in crowded downtowns, stadiums, and other similar areas. If we hadn't stumbled upon that, we probably would have seen a situation where AT&T was better in the southern part of this coverage area and Verizon better in the northern part.
South Central: Verizon
AT&T is based in Dallas, but Verizon takes this one (and took Dallas). Verizon won three cities in this region and AT&T won three, so Verizon got the region through having a somewhat larger margin in its wins. Texas is an absolute hotbed of 5G activity, with AT&T running 5G networks in four cities, Verizon and Sprint each in two, and T-Mobile in one. All of the carriers are frantically upgrading their networks.
This year, you may notice, we went to San Antonio instead of Austin. We alternate those two cities from time to time, but it definitely factored in that Austin has been dragging its feet on 5G; the city may lose its primacy as a tech hub if other nearby cities develop better networks.
Northwest: AT&
AT&T won or tied three of our awards here, Verizon won two, Sprint won or tied two, and T-Mobile tied one. In terms of tech hubs, AT&T had the best performance in Seattle, while Verizon took the award for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Verizon might have won overall except that we had a very tough time with it in Salt Lake City, where its network struggled on multiple devices. AT&T also had the best coverage in our rural drives, although we saw some stretches where no carrier worked at all; if you're going into the mountains, make sure to take a satellite locator.
Southwest: AT&T
AT&T swept this region of the country (Verizon tied in one city), which cemented its nationwide win.
Testing Methodology
For this year's Fastest Mobile Networks testing, we used custom field test software designed by Ookla, the creator of Speedtest.net. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com's parent company.) The software was loaded onto sets of four Samsung Galaxy S10 series phones, chosen because they can access the latest network upgrades on all the major wireless carriers. Three sets of phones were driven around the country in rental cars—one down the East Coast, one down the center of the country, and one down the West Coast.
The software runs tests every two minutes. We used Ookla's default server selection methodology, which finds the nearest, fastest server in the company's comprehensive network. Over the course of driving, we tested downloads from 459 different servers, executing about 60,000 test runs.
We stopped at between 12 and 20 locations, for at least 15 minutes each, in our 30 cities. We averaged the data in each location, then averaged the locations together for an overall city result. The aggregated data from traveling between the test locations counted into the overall averages as two more locations. As we are testing LTE networks, we did not average in speeds on non-LTE networks. If a phone dropped off an LTE network, it was treated as if the test failed.