RootMetrics has released its mobile performance report for the second half of 2014 for the U.S. wireless market.
Performance at the National level
Verizon is leading the mobile network race in nearly all aspects of testing including the Overall performance, Reliability, Speed categories, network for Data and Call, the report said.
AT&T was at the top in Text and finished a close second in every other category. Sprint and T-Mobile trailed behind, showing there are still two distinct tiers for the major carriers.
Sprint and T-Mobile, though remain in the second tier, are cutting into the lead of Verizon and AT&T.
Sprint showed progress, leapfrogging T-Mobile to finish in third place in the overall national score and surpassing Verizon for second place in the Text category.
While T-Mobile finished fourth in the overall national score, its data network and speed performances helped it surpass Sprint to finish third in these categories.
T-Mobile came in 2nd after Verizon and ahead of AT&T in the overall category of the top 30 metros, with Sprint coming in with zero wins.
In the top 30 metros, T-Mobile also placed 1st in the speed and text categories as well as 2nd in the data category.
Tests continue to show T-Mobile gaining ground in those top metros while AT&T and Verizon are losing ground. In the 2nd half of 2014, T-Mobile added over 35 million LTE pops.
US National Overall Performance rankings:
Verizon (93.5)
AT&T (91.3)
Sprint (86.3)
T-Mobile (83.5)
Verizon ranked highest in both network reliability and network speed.
Reliability Index rankings:
Verizon (95.1)
AT&T (93.4)
Sprint (90.6)
T-Mobile (84.8)
Speed Index rankings:
Verizon (88.7)
AT&T (85.2)
T-Mobile (78.6)
Sprint (70.7)
Data Performance rankings:
Verizon (94.1)
AT&T (91.2)
T-Mobile (81.3)
Sprint (81.0)
Call Performance rankings:
Verizon (93.2)
AT&T (91.0)
Sprint (90.2)
T-Mobile (84.4)
Text Performance rankings:
AT&T (92.9)
Sprint (92.4)
Verizon (92.2)
T-Mobile (89.4)
State Performance
On the state level, Verizon won or shared for the Overall RootScore Award in 48 out of 50 states, and won or shared an astounding 257 of 300 total performance awards.
AT&T finished second in the tally of state awards, but performance in tests was close to that of Verizon.
Sprint finished with 32 (won or shared) total state awards, more than doubling its tally from the last report, after making great strides in its network reliability and improving both call and text performances.
T-Mobile showed improvement, moving from one award last time to four (won or shared) awards and winning the speed index outright for Rhode Island. T-Mobile has established its LTE rollout at the metro level.
Metro Performance
Verizon led the metro award tally by a large margin, winning or tying for 1st place in 113 of the 125 Overall Score Awards at the metro level.
AT&T showed solid improvement in speed performance, adding 17 1st place wins or ties in speed index results from the 1st half of 2014.
Both T-Mobile and Sprint gained or remained neutral across all award categories, taking awards from the top two. T-Mobile’s upgrades have helped it stay ahead of Sprint in the Metro Awards tally and move into a neck-and-neck race with Verizon when looking at median download speed performance.
T-Mobile also recorded the fastest median upload speed for any network. T-Mobile is often offering top-notch speeds in most metro markets across the United States.
Verizon continues to show more consistent speed performance than T-Mobile. T-Mobile showed signs of improved reliability, but an increased block call rate held the network back.
During the second half of 2014, RootMetrics testers drove nearly 293,000 miles, visited 6,200 indoor locations, and conducted 5.7 million tests across all 50 states using the same phones consumers can buy from the carriers’ stores.
