T-Mobile takes the crown in rural 5G, leaving AT&T and Verizon in the dust

Living in a remote rural part of the US? Well, T-Mobile has got you covered, according to a new report by Ookla.

5G and its super good speeds are something many have been enjoying for a few years now. However, it didn't start exactly glamorous for Americans living in rural areas. The big three major carriers have been working on expanding their coverage all over the US and a new report from Ookla highlights who's got more when it comes to their 5G network in rural markets.

As you may know, the strategies for expansion in rural areas depend on what parts of the 5G spectrum each carrier holds: and more importantly, how much mid-band spectrum they have. Guess who the winner is? T-Mobile!

According to the report, T-Mobile is currently rocking the largest percentage of 5G users spending the majority of their time on its 5G network in both urban and rural markets.

Ookla's 5G Availability metric was used for the report, which basically shows how likely a user, on average, is to have 5G service available.

Availability is influenced by 5G network coverage, but also network policies of each carrier. For example, some providers may prioritize 4G-LTE for tasks that require smaller data transfer. The data from the research measures the percentage of 5G active users connected to 5G a majority of the time, and that's based on when the 5G icon is shown on your phone.

T-Mobile has been hitting the gas on its rural expansion, and the Magenta carrier had a goal of reaching a 20% share of households in small markets by the end of 2025. By 2026, T-Mobile wants to provide coverage to 90% of America's rural population. Big goals, indeed, but the carrier doesn't seem to be holding its horses.

T-Mobile's growth and lead in the number of 5G users on 5G in both urban and rural markets is determined by an analysis from 2019 to 2024. AT&T came in second, and Verizon came in last.



T-Mobile's lead isn't particularly surprising, as by the second half of last year, the carrier recorded its highest 5G Availability score in the US: 89.4% of its users on its 5G network the majority of the time.

How did T-Mobile achieve this? T-Mobile's growth

The carrier has been strategically planning, it seems. It first deployed 5G in 2019 in its low-band 600MHz spectrum, which it now calls its Extended Range 5G. By 2023, Extended Range 5G covered 323 million people, and nowadays, it's grown to 98% of the US.

Of course, T-Mobile also acquired Sprint in 2020 and thus was able to deploy 5G in the 2.5GHz spectrum. One condition for getting approved for this deal by the FCC (Federal Trade Commission) was for T-Mobile to deploy 5G service to 97% of the US population in three years, and to 99% in six.

Nowadays, T-Mobile's mid-band spectrum is called the Ultra Capacity 5G, and covers a staggering amount of more than 300 million people in the US with it.

And T-Mobile isn't stopping here either. Later this year, we're expecting T-Mobile to close a deal to acquire around 30% of USCellular's spectrum holdings and all of its 4.5 million customers and retail stores for $4.4 billion.

So, what are the competitors doing?

Of course, T-Mobile coming first doesn't mean AT&T or Verizon haven't been growing. Let's see what the research shows on the other two big players on the US carrier scene.

AT&T focuses on FirstNet for rural expansion

FirstNet is AT&T's nationwide public safety network for first responders. It uses band 14, which uses a 10 MHz spectrum allocation in the 758–768 MHz and 788–798 MHz ranges. Congress wanted AT&T to ensure first responders even in remote areas could have access to the network and required AT&T to expand FirstNet into rural areas where there was little to no wireless coverage.

In October 2024, AT&T said that the FirstNet network supports more than 6.4 million connections and 29,000 public safety agencies.

Verizon's approach: C-band and... well, buying companies

Verizon initially struggled with 5G deployment as it didn't have a lot of low-band spectrum. Instead, the carrier used a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) which allows it to run 5G on the same spectrum bands as LTE (AT&T also uses DSS in some of its low-band spectrum).

However, this approach turned out to be bad news as it didn't give a boost to customers' download speeds as much.

Meanwhile, Verizon also launched 5G on its C-band spectrum, which it bought for $52 billion during an auction in 2021.

But it's not that easy for rural areas. There, Verizon focused on gaining access to spectrum through acquisitions and purchased many of its roaming partners: Bluegrass Cellular in 2020 (in Kentucky), Blue Mobility (New York and Pennsylvania), Triangle Mobile (Montana), and Chariton Valley Communications Corp in 2021 (Missouri). Unfortunately for Verizon though, these purchases helped it expand its 4G, not its 5G.

So, Verizon is forced to rely on its C-band spectrum for rural coverage. Verizon is also likely to spend around $1 billion to acquire more spectrum (850 MHz, AWS and PCS) from USCellular: we don't know where these licenses are located yet, but it may be focused on suburban and rural areas.

Wyoming has the lowest 5G Availability  

Ookla's report also found that Wyoming is the only state to have the lowest 5G Availability for all three carriers. This is probably due to its low population density though. Being the 10th largest state in the US, expanded across 97.813 square miles, it's huge but its population is centered in just a few cities: Cheyenne, Casper, Laramie and Gillette. However, T-Mobile has beaten the other two here as well.

Best-equipped with 5G Availability: Nevada and Illinois

There are two lucky states two: Nevada and Illinois. Obviously, Las Vegas is in Nevada, and there's quite a lot of stuff going on there, so it makes sense carriers would want to show off the latest in wireless connectivity.

Meanwhile, Chicago is also a huge market with its Magnificent Mile and United Center events venue.

Rural 5G is going to expand even more

Luckily, that's not where the story ends. The FCC now has a 5G Fund for Rural America which would let it invest up to $9 billion to carriers to get 5G service to more people. So, we can safely expect coverage to grow even more in the near future. Awesome, if you ask me!