Best in the Midwest: Verizon beats T-Mobile and AT&T in regional LTE coverage and speeds

by Daniel Petrov / Feb 16, 2017, 9:03 AM

Best in the Midwest: Verizon beats T-Mobile and AT&T in regional LTE coverage and speeds

After its exhaustive report on overall network speeds, latency, availability and 3G fallback, the crew at OpenSignal now adds one no less important metric, and, for many who are not downtown a big coastal city, perhaps the most important one - LTE availability broken down by regions. As you can see in the map above, the grand five US quadrants were measured against the OpenSignal app data for LTE speed and availability across their swaths, and there is one unequivocal winner.

Surprise, surprise, it's Verizon that has 4G LTE available at most places in this grand nation, with T-Mobile slightly behind in the Midwest, Southwest and Southeast quadrants. The difference may not seem much in percentage points, yet these are exactly the spots many people are complaining about with their carriers out in the boondocks.

In addition, Verizon's 4G network served the fastest average download speeds in all regions but the East Coast, and the difference with T-Mobile there is probably not that much, considering that Big Red was tied with the Un-carrier in overall speeds in Q4, despite the heavier traffic on its network.

source: OpenSignal

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14 Comments

1. libra89

Posts: 2271; Member since: Apr 15, 2016

This is not surprising at all. Water is wet... I'm surprised about the West though being the same.

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 9:11 AM 2

2. disatrousrainbow

Posts: 64; Member since: Oct 24, 2015

OpenSignal was SO exhausted, they forgot to proofread their service map. Haha.

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 9:58 AM 5

3. logicsdude

Posts: 83; Member since: Jun 25, 2014

I don't know what you're talking about - availaility is very important

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 10:12 AM 4

11. Chakra

Posts: 136; Member since: Dec 02, 2009

Damn, a double whammy post right here

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 3:14 PM 1

4. libra89

Ooh good eye! I just read it correctly, didn't even notice the typo.

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 10:15 AM 1

10. tedkord

Posts: 17303; Member since: Jun 17, 2009

I had to zoom to see what you were talking about.

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 2:49 PM 1

5. skymitch89

Posts: 1452; Member since: Nov 05, 2010

Well, whatever Verizon has done to it's LTE network as greatly increased the speeds. In my apartment I get 85-120Mbps download speed, which is up from 20-40Mbps a few months ago. These increased speeds are almost as fast as, if not at time faster than, my home internet of which I average about 100Mbps.

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 10:17 AM 1

7. 87186

Posts: 312; Member since: Aug 01, 2014

of course they did. verizon spends less time, and resources on commercials that target the competition and instead invest heavily in their network.

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 12:09 PM 2

8. remixfa

Posts: 14605; Member since: Dec 19, 2008

hahahahhah availaility. lolol

posted on Feb 16, 2017, 12:39 PM 1

9. lbarllcodel

Posts: 1; Member since: Feb 16, 2017

1st. I don't know how anyone reads these articles through the repeated pop up advertisement. This is why people use Ad-away and the like.. Ridiculous, phone arena!! 2nd. In my state (in the Midwest) ATT has the best coverage, not Verizon. ATT then Verizon then T-Mobile, then Sprint. As for data speed is a different story altogether. T-Mobile, Verizon, ATT then Sprint. One thing everyone can agree on though - Sprint sucks for sure. A lot of T-Mobile "data" is user verified. I made my street "verified" by placing a signal booster 30' in the air to get 1 bar of service when I was with then, but I assure you - it's not here....