T-Mobile wins 5G availability award in new report on 5G networks in the US

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T-Mobile recently touted that its 5G network covers nearly 6,000 cities and towns, and so it should come as no surprise that in a new report on 5G networks in the US, T-Mo came out on top for availability.

Opensignal today released its 5G User Experience Report for the US, which marks the first time that the group has handed out awards for 5G coverage in the US. T-Mobile took home the 5G Availability award, with its customers spending 22.5% of their time connected to a 5G signal.

That’s quite a bit higher than the second place carrier, Sprint, whose customers spend 14.1% of their time connected to 5G. Next up is AT&T, whose customers are connected to a 5G signal 10.3% of the time. And then there’s Verizon customers, who spend just 0.4% of their time connected to 5G.

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T-Mobile has placed a heavy focus on 5G availability, launching its nationwide 5G network in late 2019 that utilized low-band 600MHz spectrum. Those 600MHz airwaves aren’t nearly as fast as high-band millimeter wave spectrum, but can reach much farther and penetrate buildings better. Verizon has only deployed mmWave 5G in parts of 35 cities to date, which explains the 5G Availability score that it got in today’s report.

It also explains why Verizon was far and away the winner for 5G Download Speeds in this new Opensignal report. Verizon finished with an average 5G download speed of 494.7Mbps, which is 17.7 times faster than Verizon customers’ average 4G speeds.

Coming in second for the 5G Download Speed award is AT&T with 60.8Mbps. Then there’s Sprint followed by T-Mobile, posting an average 5G download speed of 49.5Mbps and 49.2Mbps, respectively.

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While T-Mo came in last in this report for 5G speeds, the carrier has been working to improve them. Thanks to the completion of the Sprint merger, T-Mobile has begun deploying 2.5GHz spectrum for 5G which has lead to a boost in 5G speeds in those markets. A recent report found that average 5G speeds had doubled after T-Mo activated 2.5GHz alongside 600MHz in Philadelphia, and average 5G download speeds grew nearly 20Mbps after 2.5GHz 5G went live in New York City.

Finally, there’s the Download Speed Experience — 5G Users award, which takes into account the average 3G, 4G, and 5G download speeds that 5G users get as well as the time they spend connected to each network.

AT&T and Verizon are statistically tied for this award, with AT&T getting 42.6Mbps and Verizon getting 41.0Mbps. While AT&T’s 5G speed isn’t nearly as fast as Verizon’s, AT&T was helped in this category by its fast 4G speeds and the amount of time AT&T customers spend connected to 5G.

T-Mobile came in third in this category with 33.7Mbps while Sprint finished fourth with 28.2Mbps.

This report gathered data from 2.4 million devices that took nearly 16 million measurements between March 16th and June 13th.

Source: Opensignal

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