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T-Mobile and Verizon are the dominant mobile operators when it comes to winning Opensignal’s latest mobile network experience awards. Out of Opensignal’s seven award categories, T-Mobile and Verizon won three awards each while AT&T won one award for Download Speed Experience. Sprint came up empty in the awards category. Sprint was acquired by T-Mobile in April and its network is now being integrated into T-Mobile’s, a process that will likely take a few years to accomplish.
Opensignal’s new Games Experience award measures how users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. In this first-ever assessment of the Games Experience in the U.S., three of the four U.S. operators scored in the Fair category (65-75 on a 0-100 scale), which means that users found the experience “average” and in most cases the game was responsive to the actions of the player. But our users observed the best gaming experience on T-Mobile and the operator won this category with a score of 71.4.
Verizon won the Video Experience award with a score of 57.3, which puts it firmly into the Good category (55-65 on a 0-100 scale). Sprint was slightly behind Verizon but also in the Good category with a score of 55.4. T-Mobile is inching closer to the Good category but with a score of 54.6 it still placed in the Fair category and AT&T, with a score of 51.3, is in the Fair category. When it comes to Video Experience globally, the U.S. lags behind many countries. In our recent State of the Mobile Network Experience Report 2020, the U.S. ranked 73rd in Video Experience behind countries such as Norway, South Korea, the U.K., Italy and Romania.
AT&T continues its rapid rise in download speeds. In the six months since Opensignal published its last report, our users on AT&T’s network saw their average download speeds increase from 27.5 Mbps to 32.6 Mbps, making it the winner of the Download Speed Experience award. Similarly, T-Mobile is cranking up its upload speeds. Since our last report in January 2020, Opensignal users on T-Mobile’s network have seen their average upload speeds rise from 8.6 Mbps to 10.5 Mbps.
T-Mobile is the winner of Opensignal’s Voice App Experience award, with a score of 80.2 (on a scale of 0-100). This moves T-Mobile into the Good category, which means many users were satisfied with the experience and only experienced minor quality impairments. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint all scored in the Acceptable range (74-80), which means that some users were satisfied but some experienced perceptible call quality impairments.
Verizon once again won the 4G Availability Award by beating T-Mobile by a very slim margin. Verizon scored a 97.4% rating, which is just slightly ahead of T-Mobile’s score of 97%. 4G Availability measures the average proportion of time Opensignal users spend connected to a 4G network, and that includes the time a device is connected to a 5G network in non-standalone access mode (NSA), which requires a simultaneous 4G connection. Verizon also won Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience Award with a score of 9.8 on a scale of 0-10. This measurement shows how mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network. Verizon is just 0.3 points ahead of its nearest competitor, AT&T, which had a score of 9.5.
The U.S. mobile market is intensely competitive and 5G deployments are evolving at a rapid pace. Service providers have already launched commercial 5G services in many cities and Opensignal has analyzed the 5G mobile network experience of our 5G users in a 5G User Experience report. In addition, our 5G users contribute to the overall mobile network experience measures covered in this report. In this report, we’ve analyzed the overall mobile network experience of all our U.S. users on each of the United States’ four nationwide operators, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile, over a 90-day period starting March 16 and ending June 13. We include users with all types of phone — high-end and low-end, new and old – to represent the real-world experience of all mobile users. Along with our national analysis, we've also examined our users’ mobile network experience in 100 key cities.
Since our last USA Mobile Experience report in January, T-Mobile closed its acquisition of Sprint and is in the process of integrating the two networks. However, the operator has said that this process could take up to three years to accomplish. Opensignal will continue to report on Sprint’s network performance until that integration is complete or the Sprint brand is retired.
For the first time, Opensignal has measured the mobile gaming experience of our U.S. users at the operator level. Games Experience measures on a scale of 0-100 how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network and looks at how users are impacted by mobile network conditions such as latency, packet loss and jitter. Earlier this year, Opensignal looked at the mobile gaming experience globally in our report, State of the Mobile Games Experience in the 5G Era — and the U.S. market ranked 35th out of the 100 markets we examined.
The most dramatic changes in network experience that we observed since our January 2020 report were in download and upload speeds. Our AT&T users saw the biggest gains in Download Speed Experience, with AT&T users seeing an average download speed of 32.6 Mbps, which is up from 27.5 Mbps in our January report. This is likely due to several upgrades the company has been making to its network. AT&T told investors at the Cowen & Company Tech, Media and Telecom conference in late May that it has also been deploying additional spectrum it acquired in the AWS and WCS auctions, which adds extra capacity. The operator also has said that it is modernizing its network by adding 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM and carrier aggregation. These technologies all help to boost the performance of the LTE network.
Likewise, on the Upload Speed Experience our users on T-Mobile’s network saw their average upload speeds increase to 10.5 Mbps, which is nearly 2 Mbps faster than what we measured in our January 2020 report. And it’s a full 2.9 Mbps faster than what Opensignal users on Verizon’s network experienced and 4.6 Mbps faster than what Opensignal users on AT&T’s network observed. This increase in upload speed may be a result of T-Mobile’s deployment of its 5G network in the 600 MHz spectrum band which it turned on in December 2019.
At the time, T-Mobile said that customers would also see improvements in performance on the company’s 4G network. In addition, in March T-Mobile partnered with several companies, including Dish Network and Bluewater Wireless, to light up additional 600 MHz spectrum so it could expand its network capacity to respond to the impact of COVID-19 on daily life. Opensignal found that this additional 600 MHz spectrum increased T-Mobile’s network speeds.
| Mobile Experience Awards USA | ||||
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July 2020,
USA Report
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V
Verizon
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T
T-Mobile
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A
AT&T
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S
Sprint
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Video Experience
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Games Experience
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Voice App Experience
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Download Speed Experience
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Upload Speed Experience
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4G Availability
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4G Coverage Experience
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Mobile Experience Awards Winners
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July 2020,
USA
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|---|---|
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Video Experience
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V
Verizon
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Games Experience
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T
T-Mobile
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Voice App Experience
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T
T-Mobile
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Download Speed Experience
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A
AT&T
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Upload Speed Experience
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T
T-Mobile
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4G Availability
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V
Verizon
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4G Coverage Experience
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V
Verizon
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Verizon was the winner of the Video Experience category with a score of 57.3 on a 0-100 scale, which gives it a Good rating (55-65). This means that users had a less consistent experience and had noticeably slower loading times with some stalling.
Sprint was the only other operator to score in the Good category with a score of 55.4. Both T-Mobile and AT&T — with scores of 54.6 and 51.3, respectively — placed in the Fair category (40-55). This means that on high resolution videos their users experienced very slow loading times and prolonged stalling. However, lower resolution videos from some providers might have provided an acceptable experience.
When we look solely at the 4G Video Experience, Verizon again had the highest score (58.2) while Sprint was only slightly behind with a score of 57.5, putting them both in the Good category. T-Mobile came in third with a score of 54.9 and AT&T was in fourth place with a score of 52.0, which puts both in the Fair category.
Three out of the four U.S. operators scored in the Fair category with a score between 65-75 on a 0-100 scale but T-Mobile was the winner with a score of 71.4. Verizon was in second place with a score of 69.8, just ahead of AT&T’s score 69.4. A score in the Fair category means that users found the experience “average”. In most cases the game was responsive to the actions of the player with most users reporting that they felt like they had control over the game.
Sprint, with its score of 59.9, placed in the Poor category (40-65). This means that the network characteristics we found during our testing indicates that the game experience would have been unacceptable due to delays in the gameplay experience and a lack of controllability.
Opensignal’s Games Experience metric measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. The metric is measured on a scale of 0-100 and looks at how the user experience is impacted by network conditions.
This approach was developed from several years of research looking at the relationship between the technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games (such as Fortnite, Minecraft and PUBG) played around the world.
In Opensignal’s Voice App Experience analysis T-Mobile was the only U.S. operator to achieve a score of 80 and above on a scale of 1-100 which means it received a Good ranking (80-87). A Good ranking means that many Opensignal users on its network were satisfied when using over-the-top voice apps but some users might have experienced minor quality problems such as background noise, clicking or other distortion.
The other three U.S. operators — Verizon, AT&T and Sprint — placed in the Acceptable category (74-80) with scores of 78.8, 78.2 and 76.2, respectively. This means that users were satisfied with their experience but some may have had perceptible call quality issues such as clicking sounds or distortion and/or the volume might not have been sufficiently loud.
AT&T dominated its rivals in Download Speed Experience. The overall download speed experienced by Opensignal users on AT&T’s network was 32.6 Mbps, which is 4.4 Mbps faster than its closest rival, T-Mobile, and 5.2 Mbps faster than Verizon. Sprint was in fourth place in Download Speed Experience with a score of 25.4 Mbps.
When we look at 4G Download Speeds, AT&T maintained its strong position with a score of 34.0 Mbps. The average 4G download speeds observed by our AT&T users were 5.4 Mbps faster than their T-Mobile counterparts, who saw the second fastest average 4G speeds (28.6 Mbps). For comparison, we have very recently published analysis of 5G speeds on each carrier in our USA 5G User Experience Report.
T-Mobile won this category — our users on its network observed average upload speeds of 10.5 Mbps, which is 2.9 Mbps faster than its next closest rival Verizon. Our users on Verizon’s network observed average upload speeds of 7.6 Mbps and our users on AT&T’s network experienced average upload speeds of 5.8 Mbps. Our Sprint users had the slowest experience with average upload speeds of 3.0 Mbps. Upload speeds are becoming increasingly important as mobile users are spending more time uploading videos to social media services like TikTok.
When we break down 3G versus 4G connections, we find our users on T-Mobile topped 10.7 Mbps in 4G Upload Speed, while our users on Verizon observed average 4G upload speeds of 7.7 Mbps. Our AT&T users had 4G upload speeds of 6.1 Mbps, while our Sprint users had quite low upload speeds of just 3.1 Mbps. For now, 5G technology is mainly being used for download, not upload, but this will change as carriers evolve their 5G networks and standalone 5G services arrive that no longer rely on 4G in order to operate.
Verizon won first place in our 4G Availability metric with a score of 97.4% and T-Mobile was only a little behind Verizon with a score of 97%. AT&T and Sprint were slightly lower with scores of 94.9% and 94.6% respectively. Verizon’s score of 97.4% was an increase of 1.5 percentage points from our last report. Sprint made the biggest gain in 4G Availability with a score of 94.6% which is 2.1 percentage points higher than its score of 92.5% in our last report, though AT&T was close behind with our users on its network observing a rise of 2 percentage points in this measure of the mobile experience.
All four of the U.S. nationwide operators are strong in this measure of the mobile experience, as our users experienced 4G Availability scores of 94.6% and higher. Even a small increase in an operator’s 4G Availability ranking will equate to a significant user impact because of the additional time connected to the 4G network. 4G Availability continues to be important in a 5G world because current non-standalone 5G services require a 4G connection in order to work.
Verizon was the winner of Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience award with a score of 9.8 on a scale of 1-10. AT&T came in second place with a score of 9.5. The higher the number means our users experienced 4G Coverage in more locations of higher relative importance according to the population that spends time in them.
AT&T and Sprint both increased their 4G Coverage Experience the most from our last report with scores of 9.5 and 8.4 up from 9.3 and 8.2 in January.
In our regional analysis, we assessed the mobile experience in 100 of the largest cities in the United States. This detailed analysis gives us the opportunity to see where the national operators may be making improvements to their users’ mobile experience and networks on a city-by-city basis. We also grouped the cities by regions of the U.S. to provide some insight in how operators are performing in different regions of the U.S.
In the Northeastern U.S., where Verizon is based, the operator was strong in Video Experience. The operator had 11 wins and 5 draws. Buffalo, N.Y. was the only city in the Northeastern region where Verizon didn’t win or tie in Video Experience.
Reflecting the national results, T-Mobile was very strong in Upload Speed Experience in the Northeast with 13 wins and two draws and AT&T was strong in Download Speed Experience with 10 wins and four draws. However, 4G Availability was an interesting area to watch. Verizon was the leader with five wins and 12 draws, T-Mobile had 11 draws and Sprint had three draws.
In the Southeastern U.S., the Games Experience metric was one of the most competitive categories. Verizon had eight wins and six draws while AT&T had seven wins (including Atlanta which is a big market for AT&T and the former headquarters for its wireless division) and seven draws. T-Mobile had five wins and four draws.
In the Southwest, T-Mobile dominated in Upload Speed Experience winning 11 markets and drawing in one market. The only market where T-Mobile didn’t have a win or a draw was Tucson, Arizona, where Verizon was the winner. Again, one of the most competitive areas was Games Experience with AT&T winning one market and drawing in eight. Verizon won two markets and drew in nine and T-Mobile had five draws.
Verizon was very strong in several categories in the Midwest. In Video Experience Verizon had 16 wins and five draws. Sprint had two draws and T-Mobile had four draws. In 4G Availability Verizon had 19 wins and drew with AT&T in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
In the West, AT&T was the big winner in Download Speed experience with 12 wins and eight draws. Verizon had one win and eight draws in Download Speed experience. Games Experience was a particularly competitive category in this region. Verizon had four wins and 12 draws, T-Mobile had four wins and 8 draws and and AT&T had 11 draws.
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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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