Verizon Has Been the Fastest US Mobile Carrier in Last Six Months: Wirefly

Verizon was the fastest mobile carrier in the United States during Q4 2017 and Q1 2018, according to 2018 Internet Speed Rankings Report published by Wirefly. According to the report, Verizon Wireless offered its subscribers 19.92 Mbps "overall" Internet speed, followed by AT&T at 18.26 Mbps, T-Mobile at 17.29 Mbps, and Sprint finishing at last with 14.77 Mbps. (The report defines overall speed capability as a summation of download speed with a 90% weight, and upload speed with a 10% weight.) T-Mobile was ranked as the fastest Internet service provider by Wirefly in Q1 and Q2 2017.

Verizon was also the carrier with fastest average download and upload speeds during the aforementioned period. It offered 20.44 Mbps (down) and 15.26 Mbps (up), compared to AT&T, which offered an average of 19.11 Mbps download speed and 10.53 Mbps as its average upload speeds. You can read the full report here. The results were collected from the results of users using the Wirefly Internet Speed Test.

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[Penguinisto]

Hint: Nearly all of the US mainline carriers are "evil", as it's on a spectrum. Their primary goal is to extract as much money as they can while providing as little as possible (without angering you enough to jump to a competitor.) This is part of why I use a secondary carrier - I buy my own device, then to with Net10 (or StraightTalk, or similar) - do a bit of research, and you can use the mainline carrier networks without paying the massive mainline carrier price. I pay $45/mo for 4GB data (which is hones

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[known_coward_69]

i gave one of my kids an iphone and it's $25 a month on AT&T for unlimited data

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[MightyYar]

This can only be true if you are adding a line to an existing plan. Your average per phone is higher than that.

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[Mattcelt]

Verizon: 11% faster than T-mobile. And 1000% worse to deal with.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

Hint: Nearly all of the US mainline carriers are "evil", as it's on a spectrum. Their primary goal is to extract as much money as they can while providing as little as possible (without angering you enough to jump to a competitor.)

That is pretty much the goal of ALL businesses, and individuals. You do as little as possible for as much as you can. I know, some will say "but I make sure I cover ALL my work, give 110% effort" etc. but do you also forgo billing 90% of your time? 30% of your time? 10% of your time? If not - you're trying to get as much as you can for as little as you do...

Personally, I use Verizon because I get great coverage wherever I go - and my business partners with T-Mobile and AT&T often have issues in NYC

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[olsmeister]

Then Verizon discovered they didn't have to be great, just a little better.

Once I discovered this little gem, my life improved immensely. I think I'm going to put it on my gravestone.

And the most expensive...

[Kenja]

so... yeah, still gonna give them a big pass.

Should then break down the average speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

They should then break down the average speed into how much each of those MB costs...

Twice the price

[hunter44102]

For double the price of T-Mobile I would hope they are faster. But it looks like not much

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[mlw4428]

It's also coverage. T-Mobile has poor coverage in terms of sq miles covered. Verizon wins on both speed and sq miles covered.

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[hunter44102]

Maybe 10 years ago they had poor coverage but not anymore. I have traveled all over the country with no issues

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[mlw4428]

I can go to their coverage maps and see the difference.

Come to my neighborhood...

[eaddict]

I guess 0 bars and the inability to connect would make you a winner... and T Mobile and Sprint. Damn AT&T is the ONLY service I can get and I am in a suburb!

NOW...

[slipped_bit]

... we can hear you.

Does it matter?

[b0bby]

I get that it's great that infrastructure is improving, but does this really matter? Once you get above a certain point (for me, on a phone, that's about 3 Mbps) it's "fast enough" and other factors become more important. For me, those are basically cost and coverage. Verizon is bad on cost, good on coverage, so for me, AT&T through Cricket is the better choice - lower cost and almost as good coverage. Sprint coverage around me is not good enough; T-Mo coverage is just barely good enough. All are plenty fast for what I need a phone to do.

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[mlw4428]

Your mistake is looking at this from a "you" perspective. Frankly no one cares about what's good enough for YOU. I want 1000000000000000Tbps. It doesn't exist yet...but that's MY personal speed threshold and I'd be willing to pay the carrier who is closest to that number my dollars. So it matters, maybe not to you, but honestly you don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Neither do I really.

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[PhrostyMcByte]

Agreed. Bandwidth is great but it's high enough now that it's not as important. What I'd be interested in seeing is latency and "connectedness" if that makes sense. How long does it take for me to load main page, and click a few levels deep, on the top 100 websites? What if I haven't been using my phone for an hour? How often do I open up an app and it just spins for 5 seconds while things get connected?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Let this sink in: most web browsing, video-watching and application usage is done on mobile devices.

May people under 30 don't even own a laptop any more; a tablet and phone are perfectly adequate for everything they want to do. These people don't want to spend $50 on cable just to get bandwidth-capped, tied-to-one-location wifi, when an extra $40 on a better cellular plan such a better deal.

Just because you don't use something doesn't mean that nobody does, and in this case you are the anomaly rather than t