US Wireless Carrier Report Shows One Carrier Absolutely Dominating

Do industry reports on the state of the wireless carrier landscape in the US matter much? Probably not for most of us. Many of us are locked into a particular carrier for one reason or another, and have little reason or strength to switch. Maybe we financed a phone through them or know that in places we frequent they have towers that provide good enough service when we need it so we stay put.

But there are those who may be frustrated with their current carrier due to a drop in service levels, the end of a payment plan and we feel some freedom or (and this is most likely) we have been informed that prices are about to increase. rise. In the past year, we’ve seen prices rise just about everywhere, often for longtime customers who have stuck with a carrier through years of changes.

We think about these things when we see new industry reports like the one OpenSignal released this week. We think about them because there may be a brighter future for carriers somewhere else, and this may help you make that decision.

With that in mind, let’s talk about how badly T-Mobile wiped the floor with Verizon and AT&T in this new report looking ahead to 2025.

In this first image you can see OpenSignal’s “Mobile Experience Awards”. looks identical to their last year’s report. The same carriers received the same awards. However, if you dive deeper into some of these individual awards, you’ll see just how far ahead T-Mobile remains. And that’s a weird thing to say because you might look at this and think, “Hey, Verizon is winning the 5G experience awards, how can you say T-Mobile is crushing them?” Well, let’s see.

5G is really all that matters for any of these carriers. They haven’t stopped talking about 5G since they first overpromised and said, “5G is hereback in 2018, although this was not the case. So if we look at some pretty important metrics here, starting with OpenSignallike the availability of 5G, your jaw may hit the floor. According to their data, T-Mobile users find 5G about 72% of the time. AT&T customers see it about 15% of the time, and Verizon subscribers see it 10% of the time. What?

IN OpenSignal’s In their description of this metric, they acknowledge that it is not a geographic data point, but instead it “measures what proportion of the time people are connected to the internet in the places they visit most often.” So in everyday life, this metric shows that T-Mobile customers use 5G almost all the time, while AT&T and Verizon customers do not. Yes.

If you keep this metric (5G availability) in mind, you begin to understand why T-Mobile is where they are in this report. For example, the overall download speed is amazing. Look at this.

I’m guessing T-Mobile’s number is so high because their customers, again, almost always use 5G, which has faster speeds. This metric also takes into account other types of network connections, including 4G and 3G. It only makes sense that if your customers aren’t using 5G 10% of the time, typical speeds will suffer greatly. And for those who have seen the Verizon “LTE” logo appear, we know what that means, right? Woof.

I don’t endorse T-Mobile as some good guy in a bad guy industry. By all means, they quickly showing signs of awareness they might as well be another bad guy. Price increases are not going to stop anywhere, including at T-Mobile. Shareholders need to be paid, man. Share buybacks must happen at your expense.

When will the 6G hype start?