Just a few weeks later latest attempt to “quantify the urban 5G experience in the United States” by analyzing data collected between May 20 and October 24, OpenSignal is back with an interesting new report based on speed tests conducted between October 21 and November 20.
That October 21 start date for this latest rigorous research wasn’t chosen at random, you notice, following closely behind the much-publicized and somewhat controversial Verizon’s delay. Deployment of the “national” 5G network.
Of course, America’s premier wireless service provider made The 5G industry started some time ago with an even more controversial Ultra wideband signal that has reached a very small portion of Big Red’s customers in a limited number of cities across the country. But that’s precisely what makes this new report so intriguing, documenting the sudden changes in download speeds and 5G availability recently experienced by many Verizon subscribers in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.
Is the 5G playing field now level?
At first glance, this certainly seems to be the case, as the 5G download speed averages produced by the three major US carriers in three of the aforementioned five major cities reviewed by OpenSignal were so close that no clear leader could be chosen by the company analysts. .
Meanwhile, T-Mobile became the definitive winner in Washington and Houston, but Verizon and AT&T both recorded over 40 Mbps across the board, making the 5G market extremely competitive. Ultimately, Magenta has a slight overall speed advantage in these five cities, largely made possible by this incredibly valuable value. average band spectrum acquired from Sprint, which T-Mo was very quick to integrate, redeploy and expand to more and more places.
In contrast, Big Red and Ma Bell use a combination of low and high band technologies to cover a large part of the country with a slow 5G signal and deliver insane speeds to a small number of users. What is unique about Verizon’s approach is something called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), which T-Mobile claimed it would do Its main rival’s “national” 5G is inferior to its 4G LTE network in more than one way.
At least for now, that doesn’t quite seem true, although Verizon’s average 5G download speeds have indeed declined since early October. The same goes for the overall download speed experience of 5G users, which combines 5G speeds with 4G LTE speeds and the time spent connecting to each technology.
This very important metric is down for Verizon but up for T-Mobile and AT&T, which is certainly not an encouraging sign for the nation’s largest mobile network operator. On the bright side, all three carriers still offer significantly higher speeds on 5G than their old 4G networks, proving that there is a lot of “misplaced cynicism” about the advancements and benefits of US 5G technology.
Verizon has a long way to go in terms of 5G availability
The main reason Verizon finally made its ‘national’ DSS-powered 5G movement, of course, has to do with the availability of 5G rather than speed, but while the operator has clearly made progress in this area, there is still no rival. T Mobile.
Interesting way, AT&T isn’t that far behind the 5G uptime champion, at least not in these big five cities. Oddly enough, while Big Red made huge gains ranging from less than 1% to between 9.2 and 13.9%, and Magenta also increased its already impressive numbers, Ma Bell managed to drop a few points to a few. places in just over a month.
It is also important to point out that nationwide 5G availability results are likely drastically different from what OpenSignal found in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, as T-Mobile performs particularly well in rural 5G coverage , a department where Verizon is susceptible at least a little longer.
