Even as all three big U.S. carriers continue to expand their fastest midrange 5G coverage, T-Mobile maintains a healthy lead on the competition — especially when it comes to overall network speeds across both 4G/LTE and 5G.
That’s the word from Ookla’s H1 U.S. Connectivity Report published today. While the latest scores show that Verizon and AT&T have made considerable strides in 5G performance, they still have a long way to go before they can match T-Mobile’s lead — and there’s an even greater gap when it comes to overall network performance.
T-Mobile’s massive 5G footprint matters
It’s notable that even though Verizon and AT&T have been making headway on improving median 5G performance, neither broke the 200Mbps barrier last year — a threshold that T-Mobile crossed in January 2023. Verizon leaped ahead at the end of last year, with a 47% increase in median 5G speeds in the second half of 2023, but it was still only kissing the edge of that 200Mbps mark.
That changed in the first half of 2024. Verizon now joins T-Mobile in the 200Mbps club, reaching 207.79Mbps. However, T-Mobile is still leaving it in the dust with median download speeds of 265.80Mbps during the same period, expanding the gap even further from the 42.44Mbps lead it had in January.
Still, while Verizon’s speeds are impressive when looking solely at its 5G service, those numbers drop off when 4G/LTE networks are factored in.
T-Mobile has managed to remain well above the 200Mbps mark in overall median download speeds at 234.82Mbps. Ookla now uses “Speed Scores” rather than raw performance numbers, so it’s no longer reporting all the specific download speeds. However, T-Mobile’s 234.82Mpbs equates to a Speed Score of 205.98, while Verizon and AT&T only score a little over half that, at 112.28 and 107.77, respectively. This suggests a roughly equivalent gap between median speeds.
By comparison, the 5G speed scores show a closer race.
Ookla’s Speed Score combines median download and upload speeds, with download speeds making up 80% and upload speeds 20% of the overall score. A modified trimean is then applied to produce a weighted average that cancels out the outliers to produce a more accurate median. Ookla also adds that it only uses speed tests from modern smartphones to prevent older models that can’t keep up with the fastest 5G technologies from pulling down carrier scores.
The latest report doesn’t offer any median download or upload speeds for AT&T, but its speed scores of 131.63 for 5G and 107.77 overall suggest it hasn’t made much headway since last year when it showed median 5G download speeds of 125.73Mbps.
T-Mobile’s numbers suggest that the Uncarrier has all but completely eliminated the last pockets of 4G/LTE coverage in its network. That’s not surprising since at least 98% of the U.S. population is within range of at least T-Mobile’s 5G Extended Range network, and over 90% have access to its fastest 5G Ultra Capacity service.
Nevertheless, Verizon continues to edge out T-Mobile in 5G gaming thanks to a slightly lower median gaming latency of 57 milliseconds (ms) compared to T-Mobile’s 64ms. However, T-Mobile still provides the best overall mobile gaming experience in the U.S. since Verizon’s median latency is pulled down by folks on its older 4G/LTE networks. However, what this means in practical terms is that Verizon will provide a measurably better gaming experience as long as you’re using its 5G network.
The numbers by state
While the overall download speeds are impressive, it’s important to keep in mind that these are national median speeds, and your actual mileage may vary quite a bit depending on what the coverage is like where you live.
Even if you’re using T-Mobile, there are places in the U.S. where you may have a hard time seeing speeds over 100Mbps; the median download speeds in 20 states out of the 51 regions counted (which include the District of Columbia) ranged from 42.51Mbps in Alaska to 99.92Mbps in Oklahoma. This is despite T-Mobile being the leading carrier in each of those states. It’s worth mentioning that these are overall median speeds across all carriers, so extremely slow performance by AT&T or Verizon may be pulling those numbers down.
For the fastest states, Illinois retained its top spot, increasing to 163.9Mbps from its January score of 138.89Mbps. However, Rhode Island displaced North Dakota for the second spot, rising to 156.72Mbps from 129.5Mbps.
Meanwhile, North Dakota got bumped down to ninth place, not because download speeds got any slower in that state — in fact, they increased slightly, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the other eight states that flew past it.
This time around, six of the top 10 U.S. states scored speeds higher than January’s front-runner, and all of them were faster than the previous second-place contender.
While most of the same states merely changed places, New York fell off the list, dropping to 14th place despite a boost in speeds from 117.61Mbps to 129.24Mbps. Others, like Rhode Island, the District of Columbia, and Utah, saw significantly greater increases, ranging from 24 to 32Mbps.
T-Mobile was the fastest carrier in nine of the top 10 states, while Verizon held onto its lead in North Dakota. Overall, T-Mobile took the top score in 45 states and the District of Columbia, while Alaska, Maine, South Dakota, and Vermont were once again too close to call. While South Dakota remains around the middle of the pack at 31st place, the other three remain at the very bottom of the list, offering median download speeds below 54Mbps and median upload speeds of 5-8Mbps.
City speeds skyrocket
When Ookla narrowed its analysis down to individual cities, some interesting surprises emerged, with Pittsburgh making a meteoric rise from 31st place in January at 164.45Mbps to taking the top spot at 321.06Mbps and becoming the first city to exceed 300Mbps. The fascinating part is that there was no clear winner here among carriers, suggesting that at least two of the big three carriers rapidly expanded over the past six months to provide neck-in-neck speeds in that city — and it’s probably not hard to guess which two were.
However, even though Pittsburgh came out well on top, the next 37 cities also showed speeds exceeding 200Mbps, from Kansas City in second place at 281.36Mbps down to Boston at 200.52Mbps. That’s a massive boost from January when only the top six cities out of the 100 surveyed had crossed that threshold.
Recent carrier expansions have mixed things up quite a bit among the cities. January’s top 10 have moved further down the list as new up-and-comers overtake them. Glendale, Arizona, which was in first place in January, drops to 20th, and January’s runner-up, Plano, Texas, now sits in 13th place. Saint Paul, Minnesota, previously in third place, now lands at 29th. Only Raleigh, North Carolina, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Nashville, Tennessee, remain in the top 10.
T-Mobile came out on top in 73 of the 100 most populous cities, while Verizon won the day in Denver, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; Henderson, Nevada; Hialeah, Florida; Miami, Florida; and Newark, New Jersey; AT&T came out ahead in San Francisco, while the remaining 20 cities were too close to call.
