T-Mobile's 5G easily blows past rivals in Speedtest rankings

By the time fall 2021 rolled around, it was clear that T-Mobile’s 5G network was leaving its competitors in the dust. Now, it almost looks unfair.

Speedtest’s latest 5G network rankings for the fourth quarter of 2021 are here and, well, Verizon and AT&T still have a lot of catching up to do. After a third quarter which saw T-Mobile expand its lead in the median download speed category, that lead somehow ballooned in the final three months of the year. (Note: Speedtest operator Ookla and Mashable are owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis)

Here’s how things shook out purely in terms of median network speed:

• T-Mobile - 187.12Mbps (up from 135.17Mbps)

• Verizon - 78.52Mbps (down from 78.94Mbps)

• AT&T - 68.82Mbps (down from 72.46Mbps)

As you can see, both Verizon and AT&T hovered around where they were last time, actually losing a bit of speed in the process. T-Mobile, meanwhile, gained more than 50Mbps of median speed to make its lead look downright comical. That said, Speedtest’s rankings also measure 5G availability (i.e., percentage of time spent on 5G) and consistency (i.e., percentage of results with at least 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up), and T-Mobile’s lead isn’t quite as towering there.

For instance, T-Mobile customers only get 5G signal 61.4 percent of the time, which only looks better next to AT&T’s 48 percent and Verizon’s 36.4 percent. T-Mobile users also cross that consistency threshold 81.5 percent of the time, while Verizon came in at 77.3 percent and AT&T at 69.6 percent.

In other words, 5G users across the board get decent speeds a majority of the time they’re connected to a network, but they aren’t connected to the network that often.

Reliability has been the biggest problem with 5G since it started rolling out in the U.S. There is good-ish news for Verizon and AT&T, however: Both companies will launch a new band of 5G coverage within the next few weeks to hopefully bolster network performance. Those bands were supposed to have been flipped live already, but concerns over 5G interfering with aviation led to Verizon and AT&T brokering a deal with the FAA to delay the launch.

If all that goes smoothly, these rankings could be much more neck and neck as 2022 rolls on.