T-Mobile vs Verizon and Apple vs Samsung: New 5G speed tests yield predictable winners،
If you ask 100 different mobile device users on the same carrier and in the same location in the United States if they are satisfied with their download and upload speeds, availability, consistency and reliability of their wireless services, you will probably get 100 very different answers. any day of the week, and that’s probably true even if you expand the experience to 1,000 or 1,000,000 people on every major carrier in the country in every region, city, and state.
Fortunately, you don’t have to conduct this type of research yourself, and while you will always see fans and haters of one operator or another questioning the reliability of such reports put together by companies like Ookla, RootMetrics or Opensignal, these remain the most objective and scientific way to evaluate the nationwide mobile network experience as a whole.
The latest Ookla analysis puts
T Mobile,
Verizonand AT&T under the microscope using a number of key performance indicators while pitting Apple against
Samsung for the titles of fastest smartphone maker and fastest device models in Q3 2023. Without further ado, here are the most notable results of this new Speedtest index. :
T-Mobile still crushes it, but the gap is closing
We know this is not everyone’s real experience, but at least on paper,
T Mobile has proven itself to be the best, fastest and most reliable network operator in the
United States about… a million times in a million different reports over the past few years.
Okay, this number could be
A little That’s an exaggeration, but it’s definitely not: 163.59 Mbps. That’s Magenta’s mind-blowing new median download speed, and incredibly, it’s more than double the numbers recorded by
Verizon and AT&T in the same section of Ookla’s
Q3 2023 US Market Report.
This means that even if you currently combine the download speeds of Big Red and Ma Bell, which is obviously not how math or mobile networks work, T-Mobile is still ahead of its competitors. It’s a towering achievement no matter how you look at it, but Believe it or not, the gap between the nation’s mobile speed leader and its rivals has actually narrowed from the previous quarter.
This is because both Verizon and AT&T managed to make modest but notable gains in this department while T Mobile‘s median speed score fell slightly from an incredible 164.76 Mbps in the second quarter.
Industry leader Un-carrier continues to top every other ranking as well, winning every category from download speeds to overall network latency to consistency to video to video 5G, 5G latency and 5G consistency, but its progress just isn’t as impressive as it was until recently.
In the all-important area of 5G performance, for example, T-Mo went from a median download speed of 220 Mbps last quarter to 221.57 Mbps, which is a much smaller gain than it achieved. Verizon and AT&T were capable of it. Again, the wireless industry’s silver and bronze medalists obviously had a lot There is room for improvement, going from modest scores of 133.50 and 86.01 Mbps respectively to… slightly less modest 5G speed results of 153.79 and 101.55 Mbps respectively.
It remains to be seen whether Verizon and AT&T can continue to make progress in the coming quarters and whether
T Mobile may have reached some kind of invisible ceiling, whether or not it may be a result of the inherent limitations of 5G technology. For now, the king of 5G speed, availability and reliability is still impossible to beat.
A big victory for Apple and one for Samsung
Things are somewhat back to “normal” now that the
iPhone 15 family is out, with its two most advanced members taking home gold and silver in Q3 thanks to jaw-dropping new speed scores. While it’s certainly not unusual to see Apple flagships eclipse their Samsung-made rivals in these types of US hierarchies, the difference between the iPhone 15
Pro Max and 15 Pro on the one hand and the
Galaxy S23 Ultra and Z Fold 4 (not 5?!) on the other is simply stunning.
But Samsung still comes out on top when it comes to smartphone makers, and the reason is likely the relatively high number of old and relatively slow iPhones that American consumers continue to use even though they obviously don’t benefit from the best mobile network experience (theoretically) available today. .
