Verizon holds the lead in 4G while T-Mobile catches up; AT&T takes faster downloads award

Opensignal keeps tabs on the wireless networks and what they offer for customers on a regular basis, and now the latest “Mobile Network Experience Report” is out.

According to Opensignal‘s testing through the end of 2019, the status quo is basically the same heading into 2020, but there were some changes, too. The research team says they collected data between September 16 and December 14 of last year, with a total of 5,347,414,718 measurements, by way of 1,677,985 total devices tested. All that to say that it looks like the leader in 4G coverage remains that way, while other carriers made some improvements.

Verizon not only holds the lead in 4G availability, it also finally moved its way into the “Good” category in video experience. However, Sprint actually made the biggest improvement in this regard, jumping over 15% from January 2019 to a score of 55.5 (on a scale from 0-100). Meanwhile, Verizon’s video experience score settled in at 58.8 out of 100.

As far as uploads go, T-Mobile took the crown in this category. The un-carrier had a score of 8.6 Mbps, which is an increase from the previous score of 7.3 Mbps. That compares to Verizon, who took second place in this category, with a score of 7.9 Mbps. That’s still a noteworthy increase in its own right, though, as last year Verizon saw a score of 6.9 Mbps.

Opensignal says that AT&T is now the leader when it comes to download speeds. With the last report issued in July of 2019, AT&T saw an increase of 22% from 22.5 Mbps to 27.5 Mbps. However, the score gets even better when you dig a bit deeper:

In 4G alone, AT&T clocks in with a Download Speed Experience of 29.1 Mbps, which is 10.6% faster than its next competitor, T-Mobile, which records a Download Speed Experience of 26.3 Mbps. AT&T has been touting its LTE Advanced Pro network upgrades that it calls 5G Evolution and incorporates technologies such as advanced carrier aggregation and 4×4 MIMO, which helps explain the improved experience.

So some important changes for some carriers, but mostly what you might expect in 2020. And with 4G about to get a backseat to 5G as networks make the transition, it will be interesting to see how this particular “race” pans out over the next several months.

What about you? Are you happy with your wireless carrier these days?