Ookla Speedtest Determines the Fastest U.S. 5G Provider

Ookla’s third-quarter market report and Speedtest Intelligence tests have determined that T-Mobile is the fastest 5G provider among U.S. networks across both cellular and broadband providers. Opensignal and Umlaut have also confirmed T-Mobile to be the best 5G provider in many categories.

T-Mobile managed to dominate the competition on Speedtest with little to no contest at 135.17 Mbps median 5G download speeds. In contrast, Verizon only barely scraped past AT&T with 78.94 Mbps and 72.46 Mbps, respectively. That’s not all Ookla tested; it also tracked mobile and broadband speeds, dependability, and latency among the providers. You can see the breakdown below.

Mobile statistics

T-Mobile’s median download speeds came out the fastest at 62.35 Mbps, while AT&T sat at 47.42 Mbps and Verizon at 39.91 Mbps. For latency, T-Mobile and Verizon tied for first with a speed of 33ms. AT&T was barely behind at 34ms.

Broadband statistics

Verizon Wireless was the winning provider with a 178.38 Speed Score — Ookla’s unique test is meant to fully encompass a provider’s range of speeds. Cox came in second and Xfinity in third. Verizon also took the best latency, with only 8ms with Cox at just 11ms. While Xfinity took the highest Consistency Score at 89.8%, Spectrum and Verizon were so close behind there wasn’t much difference to note.

5G availability

T-Mobile had the best 5G availability at 64.4%, according to the report. Meanwhile, Verizon and AT&T didn’t even pass over 50%. Verizon Wireless did have the highest 5G Consistency Score of 78.8%, but T-Mobile was close behind with 78.4%. While providers have been hard at work delivering a better 5G experience, hardware isn’t too far behind. With Ookla’s testing, the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max were acknowledged as the fastest popular mobile devices by reaching a median download speed of 94.72 Mbps and 95.96 Mbps when operating on T-Mobile’s network.

Best locations

Ookla’s tests have even determined what places across the U.S. have better overall speeds. Overall, T-Mobile ranked the fastest in 51 out of the 100 most populated cities in the U.S. Verizon ranked fastest in 10, AT&T across nine, and U.S. Cellular in one.

Looking at some individual results reveals a few interesting standouts. For example, Pittsburgh had the fastest median mobile speed at 82.94 Mbps among U.S. cities. In contrast, Austin, Texas had the best fixed broadband speed with Google Fiber at 196.28 Mbps. The best region overall was New Jersey, with a median of 158.19 Mbps from Verizon.

Test yourself

If you’d like to test out your current speeds, there are a plethora of different online speeds tests you can check out.

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