Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A new study compares the three major US carriers in terms of user experience.
- The study found that T-Mobile earns the top spot in most categories.
- The difference between AT&T and Verizon is much closer.
You may have your own opinion of which of the big three is the best carrier in the country. But how do AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon truly stack up against each other? A new report has analyzed consumers’s connectivity experiences and it looks like it was a lopsided victory for one of the networks.
The folks over at Opensignal have conducted a study pitting AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile against each other. All three carriers were tested on four metrics: overall experience, 5G experience, coverage, and consistency. Each metric also had various categories, such as overall video experience, 5G game experience, coverage availability, and more. In total, the carriers were rated in 15 different categories.
Despite its recent spate of consumer-unfriendly decisions, it appears that T-Mobile is the big winner in this contest. The Un-carrier was named as the best in nine of the 15 categories. As you can see in the chart above, T-Mobile had an overwhelming victory in overall experience, completely shutting out the other two. It also won two of the four categories in coverage and the only category in consistency. Meanwhile, the firm came up lacking in the 5G experience field, only claiming the best 5G download speed.
As it turns out, 5G experience is where Verizon shines. Verizon won the awards for best video, live video, games, and upload speed. It also managed to snag a win over T-Mobile for coverage experience.
Meanwhile, AT&T didn’t exactly have a great showing. In more categories than not, it came in last place. However, it did narrowly beat out Verizon for best coverage availability, earning a 99.5% rating compared to Verizon’s 99.3%.
One of the highlights of the study found that participants who are T-Mobile customers now spend 67.9% of their time connected to 5G. This happens to be about six times higher than the runner-up, AT&T. Another notable finding is that despite winning consistency three years in a row, T-Mobile’s lead over Verizon has shrunk to just one percentage point. One last thing to take away is that T-Mobile’s download speed more than tripled the times of third-place Verizon, and that gap has widened over the years.
If you haven’t been keeping a close eye on these matters, T-Mobile’s dominance may come as a bit of a surprise. It looks like AT&T and Verizon have some catching up to do.
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