Fastest Mobile Networks 2019

All four of the major wireless carriers in the US are constantly flinging claims at you—they’re the fastest, largest, friendliest, best. So ten years ago, we decided to put those claims to the test.

- Sascha Segan

Every year since then, with the carriers’ cooperation, we’ve strapped phones into a set of cars and sent them across the country, scooping up data for several weeks to see which carrier has the fastest and most reliable smartphone data network.

Verizon had a good run for the past five years with its nationwide LTE network, but AT&T rocketed into the lead this year. What the carrier calls 5G Evolution may not be 5G, but it’s definitely an evolution. AT&T’s big push to improve its 4G LTE network in preparation for 5G paid off big time, with it becoming America’s fastest mobile network in 2019.

Our Fastest Mobile Networks tests are more comprehensive than those that other publications do, and they’re more transparent than the consulting firms the carriers use for a lot of their ads—we’re responsible to you, not to them. Our awards balance speed and reliability, and for ten years, the winner has flipped between AT&T and Verizon. (T-Mobile spent a few years getting really fast, but it never matched up to Verizon in coverage and reliability.)

This year, our testers drove through 30 cities and 25 states, running 60,000 tests to determine the fastest mobile network nationwide. Using Samsung Galaxy S10 phones, we ran tests every two minutes and summarized the results across six different categories. (You can see more about this in our Testing Methodology section.)

Although it’s always been strong in some parts of the country (mostly the Southeast), AT&T seemed to back away from being a smartphone-focused carrier over the past few years. Its phone subscriptions have been flat or slightly declining since 2015, while its number of connected non-phone subscribers, with gadgets like smart cars, has skyrocketed.