September, 2021 DriveTester Results

Open a PDF file DriveTesterReport0921.pdf.

Here is some summary information for a quick-read.

Areas Covered

Summary

Overall Winner: T-Mobile (98.94%)
Second Place: AT&T (98.58 %)
Third Place: Verizon (95.90 %)

Maximum Download Speed: 528 Mbps (T-Mobile N38-135 Mhz Aggregated)
Lowest Ping: 14ms (T-Mobile-N41/SA)

Best Average RSRQ: Tie Between T-Mobile and ATT (-11)

Highest Bandwidth Available: 135 Mhz (T-Mobile)
Most Nodes: 794 (T-Mobile)

Lowest Average Ping: 40 ms (Verizon)
Lowest Ping Standard Deviation: 8 ms (Verizon)

Best Average Download: 38.923 Mbps (Verizon)

Highest 5G Availability: 45 % (Verizon)

NPERF (Trial Run with only a few datapoints)

Best Browsing Performance: 83.13 % (T-Mobile)
Average Download: 63.886 Mbps (AT&T)

My Take

Verizon still has the higher number of bad signal strength spots and bad quality spots.  This hurts the most with overall score.  They still held the lead (barely) over T-Mobile for average download speeds.  They are also still best in ping and ping deviation and show a 5G signal more often than T-Mobile.  The realization with this statement is that Verizon is still 5G NSA and T-Mobile has both (5G NSA/SA).  Also, T-Mobile sometimes will not go to 5G until downloads are performed.

T-Mobile still has the strongest RAN network.  The LTE/5G-NSA areas are not as good for download speeds or latency but the N41 and N71 bands are showing up more often now and helping those averages.  T-Mobile showed the lowest latency measurement at 14 ms (while on N41/SA). Due to the N41/N71 deployments , T-Mobile overtook AT&T for second place in regards to average latency and average download speeds.  It also appears that some of the core/backhaul issues may be working themselves out based on the better downloads, browsing (limited tests), and latency.  

There are still lots of areas where T-Mobile is not as dense (when comparing to the Levittown, PA area).  For instance, in the Freehold, NJ area, service was unreliable.  Also, in highly congested areas, T-Mobile doesn’t appear to hold us as well as the other carriers.  I can account for this based on some of my travels on the NJ transit train-system and in the beach towns (Belmar and Point Pleasant) I’ve visited.

AT&T still appears to be in the middle in a lot of ways (almost on par with T-Mobile for RAN.  With the measurements from last month, T-Mobile was showing last place in some of the non-RAN performance criteria but they are slowly creeping close to AT&T in a lot of ways.  They were last place with average download by a lot (15 Mbps lower than T-Mobile).  I am having issues believing this but I see the numbers and can’t think of any reason all of these measurements I took would be flawed.  That makes things a little disappointing for them in my eyes.

As the testing gets more reliable (still a lot of work to-do), I’m hoping to see more trends and to eventually be in a position to see how C-BAND/CBRS/N71/N41 enhancements continue to improve these measurements as we approach the end of the year and beginning of 2022.

I think next month (10/21) will be good since I will be integrating NPERF measurements into the testing which include another download test (to compare things), a video streaming test, and browsing performance.