In this new analysis, we examine our smartphone users’ mobile experience on America’s interstate highways to see how it differs in urban and rural areas — and how it fares against the average U.S. scores. Opensignal data shows that Americans enjoy faster speeds and a better video and games experience when traveling on interstate highways compared with the U.S. average. Users also spend more time connected to 5G services and less time with no signal. Mobile users connecting from highways in rural areas have a worse network experience than those on urban highways.
Mobile users enjoy 56.9% faster average download speeds on urban highways and 16.7% on rural highways than the national average of 51.4Mbps. The U.S. average includes all parts of the U.S. and not only highways.
There is a substantial disparity between interstate highways in urban and rural areas, with our users on city highways seeing 34.5% faster speeds than their rural counterparts. Looking at 5G Download Speed, users on urban highways have also considerably higher speeds than those on rural interstate highways (22.6% faster) or than the national average (18.8% faster). However, on rural highways, users see slightly lower average 5G download speeds (3.1% slower) than the U.S. average.
In terms of upload speeds, users have faster overall and 5G speeds around highways in both urban and rural areas than the national average. Urban areas also see higher upload speeds around highways than their rural highways. The difference is higher by almost half the value (47.9%) for overall upload speeds and nearly 30% faster for 5G upload speeds.
As smartphone users spend long hours in cars when traveling across the U.S., it’s common for passengers to enjoy online entertainment to pass the time on the road. When it comes to the overall video streaming services, our users enjoy a Good (58-68) Video Experience on urban and rural highways — which is better than the national average of 57.6 points, which puts it into the Fair (48-58) category. A Good experience on video streaming services means our users are, on average, able to stream video at 720p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
Looking at 5G Video Experience, the difference between urban and rural highways is only 0.8 points on a 100-point scale, compared to a 2.5-point difference between these areas for the overall Video Experience. It is important to note that 5G experience is calculated only when users are actively connected to the 5G network. Urban highways place in the Very Good (58-68) category for 5G Video Experience — our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling. Urban highways and the U.S. national average place in the same category — Good (58-68).
Smartphone users connecting to mobile services on urban highways enjoy the best experience of playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices, rated as Good (75-85). This means most users deem the experience acceptable, the gameplay experience is generally controllable and the users receive immediate feedback between their actions and the outcomes in the game. Those connecting on rural highways see a Fair (65-75) gaming experience, which is also the case of the national average. For 5G Games Experience, we again observe the highest scores on urban interstate highways — but rural highways, urban highways, and the national average all place in the Good (75-85) category for 5G Games Experience.
Opensignal analyzed two availability measures — Time with no signal and 5G Availability — for U.S. interstate highways in urban and rural areas, to see how they compare to the national average. Our users in the U.S. spend only 0.3% of their time with no mobile signal when traveling on urban highways. However, on highways in rural areas, they spend more time with no signal (0.5%) but that is still less than the national average (0.8%). Uninterrupted access to a mobile signal is crucial for mobile users, especially in the case of an emergency on a highway.
As Opensignal data demonstrates, connecting to 5G services results in faster speeds, along with a better video streaming and gaming experience for smartphone users. More time spent on 5G directly improves the overall mobile network experience of 5G users. We observe that 5G users connect to 5G services more frequently on urban than on rural highways (49.7% versus 36.2% of the time — and even more frequently than the national average of 31.4%.
Turning to the mobile network experience across national U.S. carriers — T-Mobile users see the fastest average overall download and upload speeds on interstate highways, both in urban and rural areas. This reflects T-Mobile’s results from the latest USA Mobile Network Experience report, where T-Mobile scooped both Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience awards. T-Mobile users see the greatest difference in speeds between urban and rural areas among wireless carriers in the U.S. — T-Mobile users traveling on urban interstate highways have 35.8% faster average download speeds and 47.4% faster upload speeds than they do on rural highways.
AT&T users have smaller gaps between their urban and rural experience on U.S. highways, as AT&T users enjoy 6.1% faster download and 26.6% faster upload speeds on rural highways. Meanwhile, for Verizon, the difference is slightly higher than it is for AT&T, as Verizon users’ download and upload speeds on highways are 9.6% and 42.2% higher in the cities than outside of them, respectively.
T-Mobile commands impressive leads over AT&T and Verizon for overall Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience on highways. This is due to the amount of time our 5G users spend connect to 5G services at these locations — 69.1% of the time on rural highways and 74.7% on urban highways. Notably, the AAA automobile club for roadside assistance has chosen T-Mobile as its partner across the country, for 5G and IoT services. 5G Availability is substantially higher on T-Mobile than with AT&T or Verizon. The difference between urban and rural highways’ 5G Availability is especially noticeable for Verizon, with our Verizon users spending almost twice as much time connected to 5G in the cities (25.5%) than outside of them (14.1%).
However, looking at the time that our users spend on the U.S. rural highways with no signal AT&T users spend the lowest amount of time without mobile service on rural highways with just 0.3% of time with no signal. By comparison, T-Mobile had the highest no signal out of all three U.S. national carriers, at 0.7%, followed by Verizon’s 0.6%. The situation looks better around urban highways, with our T-Mobile and Verizon users spending only 0.3% of the time with no signal in these areas, while AT&T again has the best score out of three national carriers, of just 0.2% of the time without mobile service on urban highways.
Opensignal has previously analyzed the experience of our users traveling on highways in Germany and Austria — and we see a similar story in the U.S., with smartphone users enjoying faster speeds and better signal availability on highways, than the national average. Seamless and reliable connectivity around highways to support both smartphone users’ connectivity needs and autonomous driving is one of the key use cases for 5G rollouts. It is especially needed in the U.S., which is well known for its strong dependence on automotive transportation and interstate highways.
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