USA
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
USA
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
USA Fixed Broadband Reliability Experience — MSA View
As stated in Opensignal’s preceding report in this two-part series of reports on Broadband Reliability Experience, alongside price, reliability is the key metric driving consumers’ decisions when choosing an internet connection. While the previous report examined user experience at a national level — focussing on the five Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with the largest footprints and comparing the head-to-head performance of key competitors — this report examines the 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and users’ network experience of the largest providers within them. This report explores local choice for Broadband Reliability Experience. Unlike the national report, which focused on national brand perception, it compares user experience across technologies to give a more complete picture of our users’ real-world experience.
Key Findings
Verizon Fios comes first for Reliability Experience in all 10 of its markets
Verizon Fios wins first place outright in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. It shares the winners’ podium in only two of its markets.
AT&T Fiber has the second highest total number of wins
AT&T Fiber is present in half of the top 50 markets, and ranks highest or joint highest in 14 of them, including Houston, Miami and Atlanta.
CenturyLink’s fiber offering wins in all but one of its markets
Quantum Fiber shares the lead in three of the four markets where it is present — Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle.
Frontier Fiber Internet is on the winners’ podium in four markets
Frontier’s fiber offering wins in all but one of its markets, including two of the top five markets — Los Angeles and Dallas. Frontier Fiber Internet also achieves the highest score seen in this analysis — 779 points in Dallas.
Charter has the highest total number of wins
Charter (Spectrum) wins in 19 out of 23 possible markets, including Atlanta, Tampa and San Diego.
Xfinity (Comcast’s consumer brand) is top in 12 markets
Xfinity is in outright first place in three markets, Chicago, Denver and Sacramento, and shares the top spot in a further nine.
Cox Internet is the most reliable provider in two markets, and shares the title in a further three
Cox Internet is top of the leaderboard in five of the nine MSAs where it is present; winning two of these outright — Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Broadband Reliability Experience Trends
Fiber internet providers performed strongly in our previous analysis on the U.S. fixed broadband experience in MSAs, particularly in speed metrics. This trend continues for Reliability Experience; with fiber winning in 34 of the 44 markets where it has a significant presence — with 14 of these wins not shared with cable operators. Additionally, target localized fiber providers do extremely well in their markets. Google’s, Ziply’s and Sonic’s fiber offerings each top the leaderboard in every market where they operate, with Google Fiber winning outright in Kansas City and Raleigh. CenturyLink and Frontier do similarly as well, with their fiber brands winning in all but one of each of their markets and Frontier Fiber Internet coming first in two of the top five MSAs.
Cable networks are strong contenders against fiber providers. In the 44 markets with a significant fiber presence, they achieve 30 wins, with 10 being outright victories over fiber providers. Moreover, cable is top in every market with no significant fiber offering. Cablecos regularly boast scores above 700 points, proving they can compete with fiber, with Spectrum earning the second-highest Reliability Experience score in this analysis, 774 points in Tampa, just behind Frontier Fiber Internets 779 points in Dallas.
Verizon 5G Home Internet and T-Mobile 5G Home Internet, the two Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) networks, typically find themselves near the bottom of the leaderboard in most MSAs, only outperforming non-fiber services from AT&T, CenturyLink, and Frontier. However, the competition between FWA providers is fierce, with T-Mobile managing to outscore Verizon slightly more often. Although FWA may not offer the same stability as fiber or cable networks, its dramatic growth in the U.S. market has demonstrated that it is still a viable competitor, with benefits like competitive pricing helping to offset its performance gaps.
Overall Experience
Regional Fixed Broadband Experience
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A-D
- Atlanta
- Austin
- Baltimore
- Birmingham
- Boston
- Buffalo
- Charlotte
- Chicago
- Cincinnati
- Cleveland
- Columbus
- Dallas
- Denver
- Detroit
-
E-H
- Hartford
- Houston
-
I-L
- Indianapolis
- Jacksonville
- Kansas City
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- Louisville
-
M-P
- Memphis
- Miami
- Milwaukee
- Minneapolis
- Nashville
- New Orleans
- New York
- Oklahoma
- Orlando
- Philadelphia
- Phoenix
- Pittsburgh
- Portland
- Providence
-
Q-T
- Raleigh
- Richmond
- Riverside
- Rochester
- Sacramento
- San Antonio
- San Diego
- San Francisco
- San Jose
- Seattle
- St. Louis
- Tampa
-
U-X
- Virginia Beach
- Washington
in Atlanta
in Austin
in Baltimore
in Birmingham
in Boston
in Buffalo
in Charlotte
in Chicago
in Cincinnati
in Cleveland
in Columbus
in Dallas
in Denver
in Detroit
in Hartford
in Houston
in Indianapolis
in Jacksonville
in Kansas City
in Las Vegas
in Los Angeles
in Louisville
in Memphis
in Miami
in Milwaukee
in Minneapolis
in Nashville
in New Orleans
in New York
in Oklahoma
in Orlando
in Philadelphia
in Phoenix
in Pittsburgh
in Portland
in Providence
in Raleigh
in Richmond
in Riverside
in Rochester
in Sacramento
in San Antonio
in San Diego
in San Francisco
in San Jose
in Seattle
in St. Louis
in Tampa
in Virginia Beach
in Washington
Methodology and definitions
Short single-city names have been used in the report for each MSA. The following table links these short names with the full name for each MSA.
We have included all operators in markets where a specific technology (cable, fiber, copper or fixed wireless) covers a percentage of homes passed based on our proprietary service territories: 15% or more homes passed for the largest 20 MSAs; 25% or more homes passed for the largest 21-50 MSAs. We only included offerings that consumers can buy outside of a bundle. Our geography-based approach to identifying fiber vs. non-fiber isolates fiber vs. copper quite well in most cases, but in neighborhoods that were recently 100% copper and are being rapidly upgraded to fiber, they may contain some noise from fiber customers. In the case of Altice, we do not differentiate between their cable and fiber footprint because they fully overlap. All of the homes passed information comes from our service territories from our USA residential broadband subscriber analytics product, with fiber availability identified at the sub-census block level.
Plan characteristics — for example, speed tiers or data caps — vary greatly by provider and the dispersion of the plan mix will affect the average experience result. Opensignal’s measurements capture users’ experience, regardless of the plan that they have purchased from their provider. This report analyzes the real-world situation across all users’ plans.
Opensignal references consumer-facing brand names in the reports. We have included a table below that outlines the parent companies associated with the consumer-facing broadband provider names.
Reliability Experience
Opensignal’s Broadband Reliability Experience metric measures the entire user experience, from establishing a connection to successfully completing tasks like streaming video, browsing the web, and scrolling through social media. It captures the true end-to-end reliability experience by analyzing the two most popular internet protocols - TCP (transmission control protocol) and UDP (user datagram protocol) - for a comprehensive measure of every aspect of households' experience with their ISP’s network. We can assess when things are working flawlessly, when something is erratic, and when there is no connection at all. Calculated on a scale of 100-1000, with higher scores indicating better Reliability Experience, the metric consists of three main components:
Connectivity: Measuring the household's ability to connect to the internet. While ISPs strive to provide ubiquitous connectivity there are often events that lead to outages, and the connectivity component of the score captures the proportion of times when households don’t have internet access.
Completion: Completion measures the ability to complete typical tasks. It ensures that the established connection is maintained and there is a consistent flow of information as consumers would expect.
Sufficiency: Ensures that the task is performed sufficiently well. This component includes speed thresholds, latency thresholds, jitter, and other technical components that are prerequisites for good service and application experiences.
Related Analysis
Our Methodology
Collecting billions of individual measurements daily from over 100 million devices globally, Opensignal independently analyzes mobile and broadband user experience on every major network operator around the globe.
About Opensignal
Opensignal is the leading global provider of independent insights into consumers' connectivity experiences and choice of carrier. Our proprietary insights into mobile and broadband networks give operators the solutions they need to profitably compete and win, from executive level scorecards and public validation to pin-point level engineering analytics and consumer decision dynamics.
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Confidence Intervals
For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.
In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars.
In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.
Why confidence intervals are vital in analyzing mobile network experience