These results are nowhere near as surprising as the ones we extensively covered yesterday, as they take into account both the 5G and 4G LTE performance delivered by Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T to customers across the nation in the first half of 2024.
Five trophies for Verizon, four awards for AT&T, and... zero for T-Mobile
Even though Magenta's rural issues have been well-documented and broadly discussed over the years, it's certainly... not great to see the operator's iconic color in third place almost across the board on a national level right now.
Yes, T-Mo apparently offers the worst reliability, speed, data, call, text, and video experience of America's top three wireless service providers, only placing second for accessibility and failing to earn a single gold ribbon in the latest RootMetrics "State of the Mobile Union" report.
The best overall carrier is Verizon, but AT&T is not very far behind.
Granted, the "overall" gap to Verizon and AT&T is not exactly massive, but it must be highly disappointing for T-Mobile top execs and everyday users to see the competition take home five and four national titles respectively.
The text trophy, mind you, is (statistically) shared by the two top industry dogs, with Verizon winning the accessibility, data, video, and overall battles outright and AT&T putting the reliability, speed, and call categories in its win column.
Verizon surpasses AT&T at a state level too, with T-Mobile ranking well behind the gold and silver medalists.
Because RootMetrics has made a few changes to its research methodology between the end of last year and now, the company is advising us not to compare its newest test results with those from H2 2023, which... we're choosing to ignore. That's because it feels extremely relevant to us to point out that Verizon has managed to break 2023's year-ending tie with AT&T to rule the overall mobile network experience chart all by itself, while T-Mobile has sadly lost the only title it claimed last time around (in a deadlock with Big Red).
T-Mobile is still crushing the competition in median download speeds
Despite being eclipsed by both AT&T and Verizon in the overall speed section of this latest RootMetrics analysis, T-Mobile continues to tower above its rivals with a median download score of 307.6 Mbps. That's up from "only" 250 Mbps in the second half of 2023, and for this year's first six months, it represents a better result than AT&T and Verizon's combined median download speeds across 5G and 4G LTE signals.
All three of those speed scores are pretty impressive when you think about it.
How is it possible for T-Mo to hold such an impressive lead and still lose the overall speed battle so convincingly? Well, it appears that science sometimes works in mysterious ways... and that T-Mobile's network is simply not fast enough on a state-by-state basis, let alone at the rural level. Only 27 of the latest individual state speed prizes went to Magenta, which compares pretty favorably to Verizon's 23 tally, but less so to AT&T's 40 trophies in the same category.
Both AT&T and Verizon are praised for their continuous speed improvements, but T-Mobile remains the only carrier of the three to exceed the 100 Mbps mark in all major 125 metropolitan markets tested, which further highlights how far behind the competition the "Un-carrier" still is in "minor" markets and rural areas nationwide.
The metropolitan war is won by Verizon, with T-Mobile ranking second.
Said 125 metro areas are all in all dominated by Verizon rather than T-Mobile, with AT&T being a pretty distant third placer in terms of individual RootScore awards. That also underlines Ma Bell's massive advantage over the competition in most rural places across the nation, although at the end of the day, the main conclusion of this new RootMetrics study seems to be that everyone is making decent (at the very least) progress pretty much everywhere.
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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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