AT&T, Verizon Continue to Gain 5G Ground With C-band Rollouts, Opensignal Finds - PCMag

Less than 10 months aft AT&T and Verizon began lighting up C-band 5G, those speedy mid-band frequencies are present earnestly brightening broadband show astatine those 2 carriers. New information from the network-measurement steadfast Opensignal finds melodramatic jumps successful 5G download speeds astatine each. 

This Wednesday report(Opens successful a caller window) tracked the biggest summation astatine AT&T, wherever the mean 5G download stood astatine 50Mbps successful March but had leapt by 34.6% to 67.3Mbps successful September. At Verizon, the mean 5G download climbed 15.8% implicit the aforesaid period, from 70.3Mbps to 81.4Mbps.

Opensignal’s testing, which relies connected network-benchmarking bundle "within our ain and spouse apps(Opens successful a caller window)," besides recovered that acold much AT&T and Verizon users are spending clip connected C-band. At the erstwhile carrier, C-band lone showed up successful 4.6% of readings successful March but deed 30.1% successful September; astatine the latter, C-band’s stock roseate from 16.2% to 49.3% successful that time.

Low-band 5G, which uses the aforesaid frequencies arsenic LTE and often runs nary faster, made up astir each of the equilibrium astatine each carrier. Opensignal’s study does not interruption retired however often ultra-fast, earnestly short-range millimeter-wave 5G showed up successful its readings, but its past probe recovered it occupying an infinitesimal stock of clip spent connected–0.3% astatine AT&T and 0.5% astatine Verizon successful an October 2021 report(Opens successful a caller window). 

Both carriers combined to walk almost $69 billion successful 2021 connected C-band 5G spectrum, but Verizon staged the bigger commencement by deploying it successful 46 markets, versus conscionable 8 cites for AT&T. AT&T had suggested that it would not grow connected that importantly until 2023, but institution executives said connected its Q2 net telephone that they were moving up that expansion–and Opensignal’s information seems to corroborate that arsenic good arsenic Verizon’s ain expansions of C-band.

It besides shows that AT&T and Verizon proceed to way down T-Mobile, which began deploying midband 5G  in the outpouring of 2020, utilizing the 2.5GHz frequencies it picked up with its acquisition of Sprint. Opensignal’s caller study cites a 71.5% midband stock of T-Mobile 5G readings; it does not study caller T-Mobile 5G download speeds, but its July “5G Experience Report”(Opens successful a caller window) recovered an mean of 171Mbps for that carrier.