Verizon has recovered ground and caught up with T-Mobile US again in terms of LTE speeds, according to the latest tests by Open Signal.
In August last year, the market researcher said that T-Mobile had pulled ahead and took the top spot. In the latest results, from tests conducted in Q4 2016, T-Mobile and Verizon are neck and neck in average LTE download speed, at respectively 16.65 Mbps and 16.89 Mbps. AT&T came third at 13.86 Mbps, up by around 1 Mbps from the previous report, while Sprint was still well behind, with an average 8.99 Mbps.
When combining both 3G and 4G and looking also at availability, T-Mobile and Verizon were again tied, at respectively 14.70 Mbps and 14.63 Mbps. Open Signal said the results showed the fruit of Verizon's LTE-Advanced upgrade announced last August and were particularly evident in big cities such as New York. Verizon ranked highest in speed in 14 of the 36 cities analyzed, compared to four cities for T-Mobile and one for AT&T, but in seven other metro areas the speed contest between Verizon and T-Mobile resulted in a statistical tie.
Both Verizon and T-Mobile have focused increasingly on LTE coverage and quality in their marketing. T-Mobile issued a statement after the Open Signal report highlighting how it has matched Verizon's network performance. T-Mobile won or tied for first in all of the speed rankings by Open Signal, including overall download speed, 3G speed and 4G speed, as well as winning on 3G latency.
