Verizon, AT&T Miles Ahead in Network Performance
**Editor’s Note: Which is America’s top wireless network? Click here to see what we discovered.**
Verizon and AT&T are head and shoulders above the other networks in mobile performance, RootMetrics found in its new comprehensive National RootScore Report.
The separation between the two heavyweights was small, with most categories placing them about even. Verizon came out on top, though, with the highest scores in overall, call, data and text categories of the RootScore Awards. Verizon also scored highest in the Reliability Index with its vast LTE coverage and consistently strong performances.
AT&T finished a close second to Verizon in the RootScore Awards and Reliability Index. But AT&T edged out Verizon and proved to be the nation’s fastest network in the RootMetrics Speed Index, a look at how fast a network is across data and text tests. This score is significant because Verizon offers broader LTE coverage; even without as much LTE, AT&T still beat out Verizon in overall network speed.
At the national level, the testing showed a large gap between AT&T and Verizon and the other networks. In fact, while less than four points separated Verizon and AT&T in the Overall National RootScore results, the next highest network was a full 18 points lower. When looking at mobile performance from a broad, national perspective, Sprint and T-Mobile didn’t have nearly as high of scores as Verizon and AT&T did.
Sprint outperformed T-Mobile and finished third in nearly every performance measurement at the national level. T-Mobile did, however, pull ahead of Sprint and finish third in the RootMetrics National Speed Index.
