5G is all the rage these days, but maybe you want to hold out for future rounds of 5G phones. Not to worry: 4G is sticking around for at least another decade. So if you’ve decided to hold off on 5G, which carrier is going to give you the fastest 4G speeds?
For our 12th annual Fastest Mobile Networks tests, we drove more than 10,000 miles to 30 US cities and 29 states to chart the best and worst 4G and 5G performance. While T-Mobile took the crown overall as America’s fastest mobile network due to its mid-band 5G, AT&T topped T-Mobile and Verizon on 4G speeds.
Our story has a rundown on our testing methodology, but of the 30 cities we visited, the test devices locked to 4G saw the fastest network speeds in Charlotte, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, and San Francisco. Here’s how that shakes out on a carrier-by-carrier basis.
AT&T
In our overall tests, T-Mobile won in 23 of our 30 cities compared to AT&T’s four. But lock your phones to 4G, and AT&T won 19 cities to T-Mobile’s five.
This is due to the nature of AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks. AT&T right now has almost all of its airwave chips pushed into the table on 4G; it’s just using a slight sliver for 5G. T-Mobile has fewer 4G resources than AT&T does, and has devoted a lot of its newer airwaves to 5G.
AT&T’s 4G network was the best 4G system in Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, and St. Louis.
That’s most of the country. AT&T also tended to be the most reliable 4G network in terms of consistently delivering broadband speeds, measured as 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up.
AT&T can’t rest on its laurels, though. As more people transition to 5G phones and T-Mobile expands its 5G network, AT&T will need to have to continue to improve or be left behind. The company has a 5G solution that won’t imperil its 4G expertise: it’s going to focus on adding channels from the C-band, a new set of frequencies that become available in 2022.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile’s nationwide win is primarily because of its 5G, and with the carrier periodically giving away new 5G phones, like the Samsung Galaxy A32, cost shouldn’t be a barrier to trading up. If you want to stick with 4G, though, T-Mobile’s network was the best in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, and Portland, Oregon.
Oklahoma City and Houston were two of the cities where we saw the lowest T-Mobile 5G availability, so most T-Mobile customers there are still leaning on the 4G network. That said, there’s a lot of room for T-Mobile to get better in those two cities, which makes a T-Mobile subscription a good investment there.
Verizon
Verizon’s 4G is the strongest if you live in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, Tampa, or Washington, D.C. Interestingly enough, Verizon’s (and AT&T) maximum 4G speeds in Denver hit 400Mbps, showing that 4G can deliver almost the same performance as mid-band 5G.
Time to Upgrade
Sometimes changing carriers isn’t going to help, so you might want to upgrade your phone if you live in Atlanta, Detroit, or Phoenix. The highest speeds in these cities were still the lowest 4G speeds in the 30 cities we tested.
If you’re in the market for a new phone, our 4G recommendations here are probably best suited for the iPhone crowd, as most new Android phones will have 5G. In the iPhone realm, though, the popular iPhone SE and iPhone 11, as well as older models, still don’t have 5G. You can see all of our top recommendations for new phones at our best phones roundup.
