The latest Opensignal report indicates that AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon may not offer 5G services – in the near future — to their customers in rural parts of the United States.

The report assumes significance because 97 percent of the U.S. land area is rural. About 60 million people or 19.3 percent of the population live in rural regions.

U.S. mobile operators are launching 5G networks in a number of cities. However, many rural users will likely have to wait several years before they see a 5G connection even with moves to launch 5G on lower frequency bands. Rural users will have to settle for legacy 4G and 3G networks, Opensignal said.

Rural performance

Opensignal users on Verizon’s network experienced the highest 4G Availability across the rural U.S. Verizon users on average connected to 4G more than 80 percent of the time in all types of rural locales from Fringe to Remote.

Opensignal’s users on AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks enjoyed a faster Download Speed Experience across the rural U.S. than users on other carriers, including Verizon. In the Distant and Remote rural areas AT&T users experienced average download speeds of 15 Mbps and 14.6 Mbps respectively compared with 13.8 Mbps and 12.3 Mbps for users on Verizon.

Users on Verizon’s network saw the fastest Upload Speed Experience across all types of rural locales compared with users connecting with AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint. Verizon users experienced speeds of 5.4 Mbps, 3.7 Mbps and 3.7 Mbps in Fringe, Distant and Remote rural areas.

Across all of the rural U.S. AT&T users on average experienced lower latencies than their peers on other networks.

Verizon rural users experienced latencies between 3.7 and 4.5 milliseconds slower compared with users on AT&T in rural locales, while T-Mobile users’ latencies were between 4.9 and 8.8 milliseconds slower.

Sprint users had a weaker mobile network experience across the rural U.S. in all of metrics compared with users on other networks.