T-Mobile

The approval of AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner signals big changes in the US telecoms market. AT&T gains access to Time Warner's huge content library, including TV and movie giants HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT and Warner Bros. This content will undoubtedly boost AT&T's bundled offering, and the operator has indicated it could find its way to mobile screens via its DirecTV Now mobile app. Look out for 20-minute Game of Thrones mobile episodes on a device near you.

Now that Sprint and T-Mobile's proposed merger is up and running again, the two operators are revealing many more details about what their combined networks would look like. Even before the merger is finalized, they're embarking upon a roaming deal that would give Sprint customers access to T-Mobile's far-reaching and speedy LTE network. Once — and if — the deal closes, Sprint's CDMA technology will go the way of the dodo. And in the longer term, T-Mobile and Sprint plan to combine spectrum resources to build a formidable 5G network.

Our latest national report on the State of Mobile Networks in the U.S. recognized T-Mobile as the winner in almost all of our categories, but it certainly wasn't for a lack of competition. Verizon took second place in several of our key metrics, in some cases by the narrowest of margins.

Last week OpenSignal unveiled a new experimental metric called average peak speed, which is designed to gauge a network’s full data connection capabilities under optimal conditions. We kicked off our analysis of peak speed with a look at India’s four nationwide LTE operators, but in conjunction with OpenSignal’s State of Mobile Networks: USA report, released today, we’re applying our peak speed metric to the U.S. big four.

The Motor City had the fastest LTE speeds in our new U.S.