By Daniel Santa Cruz

AT&T has caught Verizon Wireless in the race for the top-performing network in America’s second-largest city.

Mobile-analytics firm RootMetrics, which put Verizon at the top of the heap in L.A. in its last four reports, says AT&T has essentially caught its slightly larger rival. The two mobile giants scored the highest of the four national carriers in the combined performance categories, which analyzes results from data, call and text testing. Verizon and AT&T scored 94.1 and 93.5, respectively. T-Mobile followed closely behind with a ranking of 91.8 while Sprint was far behind at 74.3.

T-Mobile’s surprising surge toward the top could have a lot to do with the increasing speed of its network.

“Our findings in Los Angeles reflect a shift in the industry. A year ago, Verizon was ahead of the game. In the first half of 2013, AT&T made strides. Now we’re seeing T-Mobile’s LTE network close the gap on the competition with fast data speeds,” said Bill Moore, CEO of RootMetrics. “In the L.A. market, we observed that Verizon was the most reliable network and AT&T was the fastest. This is positive for customers; as carriers improve performance, people in Los Angeles have more choices for quality mobile service.”

For the tests, RootMetrics tested more than 76,000 calls, data and texts on the four national carriers throughout all the day from Sept. 25 to Oct. The tests were conducted indoors and outdoors and relied on Android-based smartphones purchased from carrier stores.