We’re putting our drivers on the road next week for our first nationwide mobile network speed test since 5G blanketed the US.
5G is real now. Let’s put it through its paces. Next week we’re putting cars on the road for our 12th annual Fastest Mobile Networks run, testing the AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon 4G and 5G networks across the country. We’re going to 30 major cities and the rural areas in between, using custom Ookla Speedtest field-test software to compare and contrast network performance. (Speedtest by Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the publisher of PCMag.) Our tests look at much more than speed. Coverage and reliability play large roles in our scores, and speed is often a proxy for capacity, showing where networks have the ability to take on more subscribers without choking. PCMag puts testing in the hands of our own expert drivers so we can control as many variables as possible for precise data collection that’s consistent from year to year. I’ve equipped the drivers with Samsung Galaxy S21 phones with special SIMs that never throttle, to eliminate device and plan variances. The drivers run tests on all three carriers simultaneously, alternating between 4G and 5G. Other drive tests may not be as transparent as ours or cover as many cities, and data from crowdsourced tests can be clouded by device differences and plan issues. We’ve been doing this since 2010, and we now have a decade’s worth of data on many of these cities, which is pretty exciting; by running our tests the same way year after year, we can see exactly how the networks have grown and changed from 3G all the way to 5G. This year’s phones are prepped and ready. One thing is for sure: Mobile networks never stop changing. In 2019, AT&T won our top award on the strength of its nationwide 4G LTE. In 2020, Verizon won because of its millimeter-wave 5G.
