Opensignal has used live data over a five-month period to show that Verizon customers are getting download speeds between 338Mbps and 508Mbps in five US cities, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.
By contrast, customers of T-Mobile US, which is owned by Deutsche Telecom, and of AT&T are experiencing much slower speeds – 45Mbps to 143Mbps (see chart).
According to Opensignal, which carried out the survey, “In every city, the average 5G download speed is over three times faster using Verizon than on either AT&T or T-Mobile. However, most of these measurements were taken before Verizon’s launch of 5G using lower frequency bands which Verizon calls ‘nationwide 5G’ and that change in technology will affect future results and likely cause the variation in the 5G experience on different carriers to narrow.”
T-Mobile shows better results than in Opensignal’s previous US report, says the company, though AT&T’s average “about the same”, it adds. “Since the data collection period used in that report, T-Mobile has since closed its merger with Sprint and re-purposed chunks of Sprint’s 2.5GHz spectrum for a mid-band 5G launch, while AT&T has continued to use the same type of 5G spectrum. Also, T-Mobile has mmWave 5G live in some urban locations.”
Opensignal, a research company based in London, monitored speeds automatically during the period 20 May to 24 October 2020.
T-Mobile US scored best for upload speeds, says Opensignal in the same report, with speeds of 22Mbps to 52Mbps. It came to in four cities but second in Houston, where AT&T did best. Verizon was second in three cities but in third place in two.
“All the 5G upload speeds we see are considerably slower than the 5G download speeds,” said Opensignal. “In fact, with 5G we see the difference between average download speeds and average upload speeds is widening.”
