T-Mobile crushes Verizon, AT&T in latest Speedtest Intelligence report

The latest Speedtest Intelligence report was released today by Ookla and it showed that T-Mobile was the fastest wireless firm in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2023 with a median download speed of 188.96Mbps. That was more than double second place Verizon's median download speed of 91.62Mbps and AT&T's median of 90.82Mbps. T-Mobile was also the  leader in median upload speed during the fourth quarter as its 12.19Mbps beat out Verizon's 9.98Mbps and AT&T's 8.06Mbps.

Latency is an important metric because you want your mobile device to respond to a button press or some other input as fast as possible. In this category, the lower score is better and T-Mobile's median multi-server latency measured 50 milliseconds (ms) compared to 57 ms for Verizon and 64 ms for AT&T.

Ookla measures how consistent a carrier's signal is by measuring how often the signal delivers at least a 5 Mbps download speed and a 1 Mbps upload speed. T-Mobile was able to achieve that combination at least 87.3% of the time with Verizon next at 83.7%, and AT&T third with an 81.3% score. T-Mobile also provided the best video experience (78.21 score) followed once again by Verizon (74.38) and AT&T (71.25). The same order for 5G video score was posted by Ookla with T-Mobile (81.54) ahead of Verizon (79.67) and AT&T (73.32).

By now, you've probably discovered a pattern. The pattern continues with 5G performance as T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T had median 5G download speeds of 238.87Mbps, 196.43Mbps, and 125.73Mbps respectively. 5G latency also continued the pattern with T-Mobile (48 ms) topping Verizon (52 ms), and AT&T (63 ms).

Ookla said that the 5G consistency scores were too close to declare a statistical winner. Nonetheless, T-Mobile had the top percentage at 76.7% with Verizon next at 76.3%. AT&T did finish last with a 68.8% percentage.

Overall, T-Mobile was the fastest mobile operator in 46 states and the District of Columbia during the fourth quarter.  Verizon was the fastest in North Dakota, GCI had the top download speeds in Alaska, while no winner could be declared in South Dakota and Vermont.

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