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Best US carrier? This Verizon vs AT&T vs T-Mobile vs Sprint coverage maps GIF tells all

Published: Jul 19, 2017, 7:58 AM

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The latest LTE coverage maps show why T-Mobile's trolling of Verizon on 'average speeds' is not all there is to it

The second we read that Verizon has earned third place in average LTE network speeds according to Ookla's crowd-sourced measurements, we knew what was coming from T-Mobile, and, soon enough, its CTO Neville Ray took to a blog post to comment condescendingly on the matter. After all, it topped the average speeds for a 14th quarter in a row, while Verizon slipped to a third place. T-Mobile's CTO didn't hold back, explaining how Verizon and AT&T networks "caved" under the unlimited pressure:

The real news is how dramatically both AT&T and Verizon’s networks have caved since making unlimited available to their customers - all while T-Mobile’s network has continued to soar... That’s what it looks like when carriers jump into unlimited without doing the hard work to make sure their networks are ready. In that chart, you can see that Verizon has plunged all the way down to third place behind AT&T on network speed. That’s just in the first full quarter since offering unlimited.

Isolated peak speeds from a crowd-sourced test don’t tell the whole story

Not so fast, though. The average speeds are rather close, plus a different study that doesn't involve crowd-sourced metrics, but actual driving around the US, puts Verizon slightly ahead of T-Mobile in its turn. Let's say, though, for the sake of the argument, that T-Mobile's network is now indeed 15% or so faster than Verizon's on average. Most of it can be explained by the sheer amount of subscribers that Verizon has compared to T-Mobile, but even then speed is not all there is to it. According to a rebuttal by Verizon's spokesman Howard Waterman:

Isolated peak speeds from a crowd-sourced test don’t tell the whole story. Looking across the numerous performance test results including drive tests, crowd-sourcing and customer experience surveys, and considering all aspects of a customer’s experience (speed, coverage and reliability), Verizon has been and remains the industry’s leading wireless network. Crowd-sourced data, which Ookla produces, can be impacted by many variables, such as type of device, application used, where the test server is located, and by the type of pricing plan you have. Many of these tests do not factor in failed network connection attempts - in other words, where there is no network coverage.

That last point places a gaping hole in T-Mobile's argumentation. A recent market study showed that subscribers value most carrier network reliability and performance, then cost, and last come the unlimited data options which every carrier is offering now. While T-Mobile may have gotten the performance part right, the reliability (read: coverage) aspect is still a work in progress compared to Verizon, and T-Mo already started pumping its pricing a bit to cover the costs of its breakneck expansion. Now that Verizon's and T-Mobile's family plan offerings are practically even in terms of pricing, one only needs to look at the coverage maps GIF above that we made to see who blankets more places from coast to coast and in-between.

Granted, this is still crowd-sourced data, courtesy of OpenSignal, but so is the report that T-Mobile used to boast the other day. On the other hand, this GIF pretty much sums up why AT&T and Verizon are still the ones laughing all the way to the bank when the big four announce their quarterly profits. What's your take, speed or coverage, and why is the Nevada desert so left behind?

source: OpenSignal (coverage maps) & FierceWireless

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.