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Six months ago, no U.S. operator scored better than a Fair rating in our Video Experience analysis, but since then Verizon has managed to climb out of the Fair ranks into Good territory. That means our users generally experienced faster loading times and fewer interruptions during playback when streaming video to their devices over Verizon's networks than over its competitors'. Verizon's dominance in this metric was nowhere more apparent than in the big cities, where it won or tied for every single one of our regional Video Experience awards.
One of the most remarkable trends we've been tracking in our measurements over the last year is AT&T's rapid rise in 4G Download Speed experience. AT&T is now within a megabit of challenging the download speed leader in our measurements, and its average 4G Download Speed of 24.6 Mbps was the fastest our users experienced on any of the major operators' networks due to new spectrum and network upgrades. AT&T may still be in third place in Download Speed Experience in this report, but what was once a two-way race in this metric is now a three-way race. AT&T could easily vie for the Download Speed Experience award in our next report.
Verizon and T-Mobile's tug of war in our speed metrics has swung back in favor of T-Mobile. The operator not only won our Download Speed Experience award, breaking the tie we recorded in our January report; it also wrenched our Upload Speed Experience award away from Verizon. But Verizon is still highly competitive in both metrics, and due to AT&T's rapidly improving speed results, T-Mobile faces a second challenger in Download Speed Experience.
The first commercial 5G services may be live in the U.S., but that hasn't stopped operators from improving their 4G networks. We recorded increases in average user 4G Download Speed from every major operator, and now all four of them have surpassed 20 Mbps in this metric. The biggest jump we recorded was for AT&T. It led all the operators in our analysis, with our users experiencing average 4G Download Speeds of 24.6 Mbps on AT&T's network.
Verizon once again led all operators in our 4G Availability metric, but after years of consistent growth across the industry in this metric, overall growth in 4G Availability has nearly ground to a halt. Verizon and T-Mobile are hovering just above 94% in 4G Availability while AT&T and Sprint were lingering right below the 90% milestone. We expect that any future gains in this metric will be incremental, especially as operators turn their attention to 5G rollouts.
Though Verizon and T-Mobile overshot AT&T in our national Download Speed Experience analysis, AT&T won the most awards outright in our city-level download analysis, showing that the average 4G speeds users see are really ramping up in urban areas. AT&T also clocked the lowest individual Latency Experience scores in our city-level metrics, despite sharing our national latency award with T-Mobile. Both trends are likely signs that AT&T's new urban-focused 4G upgrades are having a big impact.
It's still early days for 5G in the U.S., but the groundwork is being laid, and we see plenty of evidence of that planning in our metrics. We've observed speeds increasing and the overall Video Experience for U.S. consumers improving. The only thing we're not seeing is any further expansion of 4G access. But that's to be expected given the very high level of 4G Availability in the U.S. and the preparations operators are making for their big 5G rollouts. In fact, the growth we see in our other metrics is likely due to those same preparations. Many of the current elements of 4G, from fiber backhaul to the evolved packet core, will pull double duty as a foundation for the first 5G rollouts. By making their networks 5G-ready, operators are giving their soon-to-be-legacy 4G services a shot in the arm.
Even though the 5G era is approaching, investment in 4G hasn't stopped. In this report we've seen some of the biggest movement in our metrics in years. 5G will be the new name of competition in the ensuing years, but that hasn't stopped operators for distinguishing themselves in their 4G capabilities.
| Mobile Experience Awards USA | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
July 2019,
USA Report
|
V
Verizon
|
T
T-Mobile
|
A
AT&T
|
S
Sprint
|
4G Availability
| ||||
Video Experience
| ||||
Download Speed Experience
| ||||
Upload Speed Experience
| ||||
Latency Experience
| ||||
|
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
|
July 2019,
USA
|
|---|---|
|
4G Availability
|
V
Verizon
|
|
Video Experience
|
V
Verizon
|
|
Download Speed Experience
|
T
T-Mobile
|
|
Upload Speed Experience
|
T
T-Mobile
|
|
Mobile Experience Awards Draws
|
July 2019, USA
|
|---|---|
|
Latency Experience
|
T
T-Mobile
A
AT&T
|
Verizon and T-Mobile's relentless battle in our speed and availability metrics is far from over, and for this report we've crowned a new king of speed, T-Mobile, which not only broke its Download Speed Experience stalemate with Verizon but snatched our Upload Speed Experience title away from its key rival. Meanwhile, AT&T is showing signs of renewed life after years of languishing in the lower half of many of our rankings. The operator's only award may have been in Latency Experience, but its 4G Download Speeds have shot up in the last year. In this data collection period, AT&T had the highest 4G Download Speed score of all operators in our measurements, and it's become a legitimate contender for our Download Speed Experience award.
In the video realm, Verizon seems to have solved a conundrum the U.S. mobile industry has contended with since the rebirth of the unlimited data plan: How to satisfy consumer desires for unfettered video consumption while maintaining a quality video experience. In the last six months, Verizon's Video Experience score has surged upwards. It is now the only U.S. operator to have earned a Good rating in our Video Experience metric, meaning videos streamed to its users' devices loaded faster and played with fewer interruptions than on its competitors' in our measurements. As video is the future of mobile broadband, this gives Verizon a sizable competitive advantage in attracting more consumers to mobile video services.
In short, it's an exciting time for the U.S. mobile industry. Ironically this wave of dynamism is crashing down, not as the new mobile broadband era emerges, but as the old one comes to an end.
As in our last several reports, Verizon and T-Mobile were neck-and-neck in our 4G Availability metric, with Verizon just managing to win our award in the current data collection period. T-Mobile was just a fraction of a percentage point behind the leader. The two remained just shy of the 95% 4G Availability mark, with Verizon muscling out a win in the category with a score of 94.8% compared to T-Mobile's 94.2%. AT&T and Sprint were tied for third place with 4G Availability scores just below 90%.
We recorded only incremental growth in this metric over the last six months, with the largest increase on Sprint — and that increase was still less than a single percentage point. The level of 4G access in the U.S. is already extremely high so we would expect 4G Availability growth to tail off, but with operator attention now trained intently on 5G, that growth seems to be grinding to a halt entirely. Our U.S. 4G users can already find 4G signals more than 90% of the time. The focus for the mobile industry is now on boosting the level of access to 5G signals.
Mobile Video Experience has never been a strong point for U.S. operators. Since we started reporting the metric in 2018, neither the U.S. as a whole nor any individual U.S. operator had achieved more than a Fair rating in overall Video Experience (40-55 in our 100-point scale), meaning video streamed to smartphones typically exhibits long loading times and frequent interruptions, especially at higher resolutions. But we're starting to see Video Experience scores improve, and one operator has managed to climb into a higher rating category. Verizon boosted its Video Experience score by 4 points to earn a Good rating (55-65), indicating users are on average experiencing faster loading times and less stalling on Verizon than on its competitors' networks.
|
Video Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Verizon
|
T
T-Mobile
|
A
AT&T
|
S
Sprint
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | ||||
|
4G Video Experience
| 57.9 (± 0.13) | 52.4 (± 0.19) | 48.2 (± 0.16) | 50.9 (± 0.32) |
|
3G Video Experience
| 11.8 (± 0.79) | 32.3 (± 1.09) | 28.4 (± 0.70) | 15.3 (± 1.23) |
| 4G Video Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
V
Verizon
|
58 (± 0.13) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
52 (± 0.19) |
|
A
AT&T
|
48 (± 0.16) |
|
S
Sprint
|
51 (± 0.32) |
| 3G Video Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
V
Verizon
|
12 (± 0.79) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
32 (± 1.09) |
|
A
AT&T
|
28 (± 0.70) |
|
S
Sprint
|
15 (± 1.23) |
Video quality is often associated with speed, but that's a relationship we've discovered to be largely false — and the U.S. provides an excellent example. T-Mobile won our Download Speed Experience award while AT&T led our 4G Download Speed measurements, yet neither was even close to matching Verizon in either overall Video Experience or 4G Video Experience.
Video Experience is determined by many factors apart from speed, like consistency of connections, overall network capacity and network latency. But one of the biggest contributors to the country's lower video scores are the policies U.S. operators have introduced to manage mobile data traffic. Most of the major operators have restricted video resolution to varying degrees on their different tiers of unlimited data plans. Those restrictions often effectively force a device to downgrade streams to lower resolutions, which impacts Video Experience scores. Verizon seems to have found a happy — or at least a happier — medium that allows it to maintain a higher level of Video Experience while still limiting the outsized impact of mobile video on its network capacity.
Though to date Verizon has been the most successful at striking that balance, the other three operators are also improving their video quality. If AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile continue to boost their Video Experience scores at the current pace, Good ratings could very well become the norm in the U.S.
The pitched battle between T-Mobile and Verizon over download speed rages on. In our last report, the operators fought to a stalemate in our Download Speed Experience metric, but in this data collection period T-Mobile gained the advantage. It won our Download Speed Experience award with a score of 23.6 Mbps. In this report, though, the speed war gained a new combatant. Not only was Verizon right behind T-Mobile in our download speed analysis, so was AT&T.
|
Download Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Verizon
|
T
T-Mobile
|
A
AT&T
|
S
Sprint
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | ||||
|
4G Download Speed
| 23.8 (± 0.09) | 24.3 (± 0.13) | 24.6 (± 0.15) | 21.1 (± 0.21) |
|
3G Download Speed
| 0.9 (± 0.02) | 4.2 (± 0.09) | 3.3 (± 0.05) | 1.3 (± 0.04) |
| 4G Download Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Verizon
|
24 (± 0.09) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
24 (± 0.13) |
|
A
AT&T
|
25 (± 0.15) |
|
S
Sprint
|
21 (± 0.21) |
| 3G Download Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Verizon
|
1 (± 0.02) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
4 (± 0.09) |
|
A
AT&T
|
3 (± 0.05) |
|
S
Sprint
|
1 (± 0.04) |
AT&T's ramp up in Download Speed Experience has been nothing short of astonishing. In our July 2018 report, we noted that AT&T was in danger of falling to fourth place in overall download speed, but in the ensuing 12 months its Download Speed Experience has surged forward. Its score of 22.5 Mbps was only 0.4 Mbps shy of second-placed Verizon and less than a megabit behind the leader, T-Mobile.
AT&T's speed renaissance is likely a result of its upgrades to current 4G infrastructure, which AT&T has chosen to brand as 5G E, adding LTE-Advanced technologies like carrier aggregation, more sophisticated modulation schemes and supplemental unlicensed spectrum. Although 5G E is more of a marketing term than a true 5G technology, the 4G enhancements it represents have definitely had a real impact on the consumer mobile experience of AT&T’s users, as a recent Opensignal analysis has shown.
Those capacity and radio upgrades have reared their heads in two ways in our metrics. First, AT&T users had the highest average 4G Download Speed of 24.6 Mbps in our measurements. The reason AT&T landed third in our Download Speed Experience category is due to T-Mobile and Verizon's superior 4G Availability scores: Our users were able to find 4G connections more often on their networks than on AT&T's. Second, those upgrades are concentrated in cities, and it's in these urban areas where we see AT&T's Download Speed Experience scores really shine. AT&T took the most outright wins in Download Speed Experience in our regional awards, averaging connections well over 30 Mbps in cities like Kansas City, Philadelphia and Seattle. If AT&T's speeds continue this trajectory it should vie for our Download Speed Experience award in our next report.
Though we've highlighted AT&T's rise in download speed, we're tracking increases in Download Speed Experience from the users of every major operator. Last-placed operator Sprint saw a huge boost of more than 5 Mbps in its score. A year ago, only a single operator, T-Mobile, had a Download Speed Experience score greater than 20 Mbps as measured by our users. Now three operators have hit that milestone, and with a score of 19.2 Mbps, Sprint is also on the verge of meeting it. Even though the U.S. is preparing to launch 5G services on a large scale, operators clearly haven't stopped investing in their existing 4G infrastructure, whether through capacity upgrades, improvements to the 4G radio interface, laying more fiber backhaul lines or enhancing their 4G network cores.
The speed contest between Verizon and T-Mobile also took an interesting turn in our upload speed metrics. T-Mobile wrested the Upload Speed Experience award from Verizon in the current data collection period, having boosted its score by 0.6 Mbps since our last report. Meanwhile Verizon's user’s Upload Speed Experience held steady at around 7 Mbps, keeping it competitive with the category leader.
|
Upload Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Verizon
|
T
T-Mobile
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A
AT&T
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S
Sprint
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | ||||
|
4G Upload Speed
| 7.2 (± 0.03) | 7.5 (± 0.04) | 5.4 (± 0.04) | 2.6 (± 0.02) |
|
3G Upload Speed
| 0.3 (± 0.01) | 1.0 (± 0.03) | 0.5 (± 0.01) | 0.4 (± 0.02) |
| 4G Upload Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Verizon
|
7 (± 0.03) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
8 (± 0.04) |
|
A
AT&T
|
5 (± 0.04) |
|
S
Sprint
|
3 (± 0.02) |
| 3G Upload Speed | in Mbps |
|
V
Verizon
|
0 (± 0.01) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
1 (± 0.03) |
|
A
AT&T
|
1 (± 0.01) |
|
S
Sprint
|
0 (± 0.02) |
In Upload Speed Experience, T-Mobile and Verizon are both well ahead of their rivals, as AT&T's surge in download speed didn't apply to upload speed as well. That's likely due to the fact the AT&T's new LTE-Advanced upgrades mainly amplify downlink throughput, not uplink. Sprint meanwhile continues to trail well behind its competitors in Upload Speed Experience as its TD-LTE networks are largely configured to prioritize download capacity over upload capacity. T-Mobile and Verizon's hefty leads in this metric will only prove more advantageous as mobile consumer data trends move more toward content creation versus consumption.
After a long stint as the sole title holder in our Latency Experience metric, AT&T wound up sharing the award with T-Mobile in this report. AT&T and T-Mobile users clocked overall network response times just below 53 milliseconds, putting them both ahead of Verizon and Sprint, which had Latency Experience scores over 56ms in our measurements.
|
Latency Experience
Additional Metrics |
V
Verizon
|
T
T-Mobile
|
A
AT&T
|
S
Sprint
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in ms | ||||
|
4G Latency
| 54.0 (± 0.09) | 51.6 (± 0.11) | 48.6 (± 0.12) | 55.1 (± 0.23) |
|
3G Latency
| 127.5 (± 1.42) | 80.1 (± 1.15) | 89.1 (± 0.75) | 103.8 (± 1.97) |
| 4G Latency | in ms |
|
V
Verizon
|
54 (± 0.09) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
52 (± 0.11) |
|
A
AT&T
|
49 (± 0.12) |
|
S
Sprint
|
55 (± 0.23) |
| 3G Latency | in ms |
|
V
Verizon
|
127 (± 1.42) |
|
T
T-Mobile
|
80 (± 1.15) |
|
A
AT&T
|
89 (± 0.75) |
|
S
Sprint
|
104 (± 1.97) |
While T-Mobile may have caught up to AT&T in Latency Experience on the national level, we still found plenty of evidence of AT&T's highly responsive network connections in urban areas. AT&T not only won the most city-level awards of any U.S. operator in Latency Experience, but in several major markets our users on its network were able to access connections with sub-40ms overall latencies.
For our regional analysis we examined our Download and Upload Speed Experience, Latency Experience and 4G Availability results in 71 large U.S. cities, and we parsed our Video Experience results in 59 of those same markets. While we typically see city-level awards mirror our national awards, in this report we encountered several surprises. The fastest, most nimble and most accessible operators at the national level often weren't the same leaders on a city-by-city basis.
That trend was most prominent in our Download Speed Experience metric, where the third-placed operator nationally, AT&T, wound up winning a good deal of the city-level awards. In Download Speed Experience, AT&T won the award outright in 14 cities and drew for the win in an additional 24. In comparison, national award winner T-Mobile had 11 solo wins and 22 draws, while Verizon racked up 13 outright wins and 26 shared wins.
Where we saw the national results align most closely with regional results was in our remaining two metrics. Verizon matched its national 4G Availability win with solo awards in 31 cities and shared awards in a further 39 markets. No other operator won a 4G Availability award outright in the remaining cities, though T-Mobile presented Verizon with the most competition, with the two operators tying for first place in 39 markets.
Finally, it would be no exaggeration to state that Verizon utterly dominated our regional Video Experience category. It won our Video Experience award outright in 56 of the 59 cities in our analysis, and in the remaining three it was tied for the lead with T-Mobile. Verizon also managed to boost its Video Experience score beyond its national average in 95% of the cities analyzed. In one case, Anchorage, it elevated its score to a Very Good rating (65-75), which indicates short video load times and few interruptions during playback, even at high resolutions.
Verizon's competitors saw their Video Experience scores improve on the city level as well, just not to the extent of the leader. Only in nine cases did either AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile land a Good Video Experience rating in any of the cities we analyzed. Verizon's loftier scores, both nationally and locally, present it with a significant opportunity as the mobile phone becomes an increasingly important TV screen. Operators in the U.S. are trying to balance consumers’ desires for inexpensive mobile data plans — and the barrage of video streaming that accompanies them — with the need to manage the traffic loads on their networks. For the time being at least, Verizon seems to have found a sweet spot where it can keep data consumption in check while still providing a higher quality Video Experience.
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Collecting billions of individual measurements daily from over 100 million devices globally, Opensignal independently analyzes mobile user experience on every major network operator around the globe.
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