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T-Mobile Wins Title of Fastest U.S. Carrier in 2021 5G Test

Is it just me, or do the differences between carriers seem so small to not justify the difference in scores. TMobile was not overwhelmingly dominant across categories in my mind to have that much higher of a score. Seems like they took objective measures and made them subjective........
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I reverse-engineered their formula, and it's based straightforwardly on the scores and weights they listed, so it's not subjective. But the technical definition of the score doesn't match their goals very well, and I think it's not a good way to evaluate ISPs. They mentioned that they wanted to emphasize reliability metrics over average performance, and I think they just screwed that up.

The reason is that the relative differences in averages are much larger than the relative differences in reliability metrics. AT&T has ~8% more reliable >25Mbps down than T-Mobile, but T-Mobile has ~65% higher average down than AT&T. (That's driven by T-Mobile having higher bandwidth among already-great connections, which the authors agree shouldn't count for much.) So T-Mobile doesn't get dinged very much for less reliable >25Mbps down but wins big on itsetter b average, even though the average is given a bit less weight in their formula.

I think a better formula would give AT&T the win. That doesn't invalidate the whole article, which has some pretty thoughtful discussion of the details, but the headline result is probably wrong.
 
hate to say you, but everyone complaining about 5G I told everyone, those who got their phones because of 5G here we are many months later the tech is no where near implemented well and you wont see the benefit of 5G except some years in the future from now. COVID did not help
 
sdhalpern said:
T-Mobile is hot garbage in many neighborhoods of San Francisco, which is ironic considering what SF represents. I’m lucky to get 2 mbps down in my new home in centrally located Eureka Valley, just west of the Castro theater. Our family is switching to Verizon when the new iPhone drops.
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Homeless people typically could care less about 5g. T-Mobile kicks butt in coverage! I travel most of the U.S and I never lose signal!
 
For a long while, my wife was on AT&T while I was on T-Mobile.
During this time, we took road trips all over Western United States (driving from Texas to the Grand Canyon and similar). There are some WILDLY 'middle of nowhere areas out there. Imagine playing slug bug, but instead of VWs, you're looking for trees - and no one is getting slugged.

So there were lots of times neither of us had coverage. But, if only one of us had coverage, it was me - 100% of the time. Yes, every single time. There was not one instance where she had coverage and I did not. Both using same generation iPhones, and in the same car.

Now we are both on T-mobile.

And yeah, the data breach sucked, but it isn't like it was left out in the open. Hackers got to it. It sucks. Change your password and pin and do the usual stuff. The only reason AT&T hasn't been hacked is that no one can connect to their network, and Verizon is protected because hackers probably feel sorry for the people unfortunate enough to be in business with them.
 
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I use both carriers. Personal and Work, when in the right spot Tmobile is fantastic - though there are plenty of areas where there is just no data movement. att is most consistent for me. Not fast, but also have coverage and average speeds everywhere I go.
 
jseymour said:
Do any carriers do well in SF? That's got to be a devilishly difficult area to cover, what with the terrain, building density, and water. Plus I'd almost bet many SF residents would protest the skyline pollution of cell towers.
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Cuz the cell towers would be far worse than the human feces everywhere.
 
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What a useless title to fight for. Fastest internet is not the same as best internet. Nobody downloads genshin impact 30 times a day (that’s 180GB) just for fun.

Improve the coverage, reduce network congestion during normal peak hours, reduce network downtime, reduce the operating cost imo are far more important than “hey I can download this 10GB movie in 2s rather than 2 min”.
 
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Shirasaki said:
What a useless title to fight for. Fastest internet is not the same as best internet. Nobody downloads genshin impact 30 times a day (that’s 180GB) just for fun.

Improve the coverage, reduce network congestion during normal peak hours, reduce network downtime, reduce the operating cost imo are far more important than “hey I can download this 10GB movie in 2s rather than 2 min”.
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Speed translates to capacity so it is still a relevant metric.
 
Aragornii said:
Am I missing something about 5G? I get 150-200 mbps on my Verizon iphone 11 with LTE on a good signal. My 5G verizon iphone 12 is not any better than that on a good signal, in fact it's probably worse.

What is all the 5G hype about? Is it only for very limited specific areas that get this superspeed they advertise?
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5G only makes a big difference when they are using mmWave technology. The problem with that is it has very poor coverage and building penetration. They have to add small cell nodes all over the place to cover an area and even than signal reliability is not that great. When it works it’s blazing fast, but it has a ton of limitations.

The 5G that most of us will see is running on lower spectrum bands. It has to otherwise coverage and building penetration is poor. So far it isn’t really any better then a robust 4G LTE network and might actually be worse. Once you move away from mmWave 5G it’s more about marketing. The carriers would really be better off continuing to improve 4G in the rural areas before trying to lay 5G on top of it, but of course they all want to be first to advertise new technology.
 
% DL above 25Mbps (all you need for a 4K video), lowest latency, and best network availability all won by AT&T. Where's the advantage for T-mobile?
 
SFjohn said:
If you’re 55 years old you can get 2 lines unlimited everything for $70 a month (including taxes & fees) add cell coverage to your Apple Watch & it’s $10 extra per device. Coverage is great in SF, and the speed is awesome. We used our iPhones as base stations during a recent power outage. 15 years ago the coverage wasn’t there, but today it’s solid all over the city.

Only 1 person needs to be 55yo, the other can be any age, younger spouse, child…
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Military plan is pretty top notch as well. I have 5 lines for 110$ a month, currently. It works in most of the places I was in while deployed, but getting a local sim was better.
 
dampfnudel said:
Did AT&T notify you yet about your personal data being exposed?
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Nope. Last I read, they still claim the alleged leak doesn't contain data from their servers. Who knows. Problem is my data will have already been leaked by T-Mobile previously... so there's that.
 
Verizon 5G is slower than 3G here in central Florida, I had to turn 5G off on my 12 Pro Max to just get decent data service. Even the Verizon LTE is useless speed wise most places I go.

Slow speeds or secure customer info? Can't win, yet we still send the money every month.
 
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