T-Mobile winnning 5G speed war as Verizon and AT&T play catch-up with C-band

Opensignal is out with its latest report on 5G coverage and performance in the US. According to the results, T-Mobile has increased its lead over AT&T and Verizon when it comes to 5G availability, reach, download and upload speeds. However, Verizon did come out on top for the 5G voice and games experience categories. All this comes amid AT&T and Verizon working to roll out 5G C-band coverage.

Opensignal published its January 2022 5G User Experience Report for the US this morning that covers data collected between September and December 2021. The study is based on millions of devices and billions of measurements.

While AT&T and Verizon found themselves in a snafu with the FAA over launching 5G C-band coverage recently, that will likely be resolved before long. And it’s possible the new C-band coverage early this year could tip the scale in AT&T and Verizon’s favor (showing up in Opensignal’s next report).

Meanwhile, Verizon has vastly expanded its super-fast 5G UWB coverage to 1,700 cities in January. Notably, those deployments don’t show in this 5G report from Opensignal since the data was recorded in Q4 2021.

This time around, Opensignal notes that T-Mobile has now won its 5G download speed award for the fifth time in a row.

T-Mobile jumped from an average 5G download speed of 118.7 Mbps to an impressive 150. Meanwhile, Verizon’s 5G download speed didn’t change and AT&T’s actually went down by 2.4 Mbps.

For average 5G upload speed, T-Mobile led the pack but Verizon wasn’t too far behind. Since the last Opensignal report, T-Mobile’s upload speed increased by 1.8 Mbps.

Another important metric is how much of the time users find 5G available. T-Mobile led that by a wide margin with 35.4% 5G availability.

And for the related metric, “5G Reach” T-Mobile also led with a score of 7.4 out of 10. AT&T came in second with 5.2 and Verizon trailed with 3.7.

Verizon did win two categories, the 5G voice app and games experience. Here’s how Opensignal describes the voice app experience:

Opensignal’s 5G Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger etc. — when users are connected to a 5G network.

And for the 5G games experience, Verizon scored highest thanks to having the lowest latency:

You can check out the full Opensignal report here with additional data like regional analysis and more.

And if you’re tempted to test out T-Mobile, keep in mind you can test it out for free on an iPhone with an eSIM:

• T-Mobile cleverly brings free 30-day Test Drive program to iPhone XS and later via eSIM