T-Mobile Squeaks Past Verizon for Title of Fastest LTE Network

Who really gives you the fastest download speeds in the U.S.? According to a new report on America’s mobile networks from OpenSignal, the answer is T-Mobile. The carrier easily took the top spot when it came to downloads on 3G (an average speed of 3.5 megabits per second compared to second place AT&T’s 2.2 Mbps), and just narrowly clinched the top spot for 4G (12.3 Mbps download speeds compared to Verizon’s 12 Mbps). Both Verizon and Sprint performed pretty badly on 3G (0.7 Mbps and 0.6 Mbps respectively), while AT&T and Sprint did marginally better on 4G (7.9 Mbps and 6.6 Mbps respectively).

To keep these figures in context, the average download speed on an LTE network in the U.S. was 9.9 Mbps — fine for loading Web pages and keeping your apps ticking over, but short of the global average of 13.5 Mbps and well behind top performers like New Zealand and Singapore (average LTE speeds of 36 Mbps and 33 Mbps respectively in last year’s report). The U.S. does make up for this in terms of coverage, though, with subscribers getting an LTE signal 81 percent of the time — putting it in the top 10 worldwide, impressive for such a large nation.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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