Reliability/Performance Report for First Half of August, 2021

Keith Calligan -

Bad Signal Quality Map Qual/RSRQ = -20 AND Level/RSRP <= -120

Verizon

Approximately 712 Points with Bad Quality

AT&T

Approximately 356 Points with Bad Quality (Some of this was from outage today)

T-Mobile

Approximately 146 Points with Bad Quality (mostly centered in same areas)

310-260 and Google FI refer to T-Mobile Network
310-260 and Google Fi refer to T-Mobile Network

Average Download Speeds

Verizon

44.657 Mbps

AT&T

29.633 Mbps

T-Mobile

10.332 Mbps

Maximum Download Speeds

Verizon

199321 Mbps

AT&T

237623 Mbps

T-Mobile

234821Mbps

My Conclusions

Verizon

When in a good coverage area with good signal quality, Verizon seems to be the best.  Their radio network (RAN) may have its issues due to not having sufficient bandwidth but their core network/backhaul seems to be very good.  I can't wait to see what they do with the addition of C-Band.  Maybe T-Mobile being the first to do 5G just means that Verizon may do 5G right in the end.

AT&T

AT&T (so far) seems to be in the middle but this is probably the best place to be right now.  Their radio network (RAN) is in the middle and their core/backhaul connectivity seem to be very good.  There was an outage today in the Philadelphia area that may have skewed the reliability results some but they were still far below Verizon's number of bad quality points.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile's radio network (RAN) is definitely the best right now (the least amount of points with low signal quality).  They have the bandwidth and the addition of band 71 fills in the weak spots.  They have the least amount of points on the map that show bad quality.  When in a 5G area with N71 or aggregated band 66, their maximum download speeds can go as high as 600 or 700Mbps (this didn't happen during any of the tests I ran here but occasionally happens during my travels) on my Iphone.  Their consistency is what hurts right now and I'm assuming this is either due to an over-congested backhaul and/or core-network but I don't have the visibility to say for sure.  I would like to know what T-Mobile has done on their core/backhaul networks to account for the increased bandwidth on the RAN.