Study Finds AT&T and Verizon Have Slower LTE Speeds After Launching Unlimited Data Plans

In its semi-annual State of Mobile Networks report this week, OpenSignal claims that both AT&T and Verizon have experienced a decline in 4G LTE speeds since each carrier reintroduced an unlimited data plan in February. OpenSignal blames the slowdown on an increase in data demand now that caps have been removed.

verizon att down
From April through June, AT&T's average LTE download speed was 12.92 Mbps, while Verizon averaged 14.91 Mbps, according to crowdsourced data from thousands of users with the OpenSignal app for iOS or Android.

By comparison, OpenSignal's last report measured average LTE speeds for AT&T and Verizon at 13.86 Mbps and 16.89 Mbps respectively, based on crowdsourced data collected from 169,683 users with the OpenSignal app for iOS or Android installed between October 1 and December 31, 2016.

August 2017 Report

AT&T: 12.92 Mbps
Verizon: 14.91 Mbps
Sprint: 9.76 Mbps
T-Mobile: 17.45 Mbps

February 2017 Report

AT&T: 13.86 Mbps
Verizon: 16.89 Mbps
Sprint: 8.99 Mbps
T-Mobile: 16.65 Mbps

T-Mobile was declared as the fastest network in the United States during the testing period. The carrier's average LTE speed was 17.45 Mbps, up from 16.65 Mbps in OpenSignal's last report. Sprint's average LTE speed also rose to 9.76 Mbps, up from 8.99 Mbps in the previous study.

AT&T or Verizon remained the fastest network in select U.S. cities, including Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and San Francisco.

OpenSignal says its data is collected from regular consumer smartphones and recorded under conditions of normal usage, be it indoors, outdoors, in a city, or in the countryside. For this particular report, it said 5,073,211,200 data points were collected from 172,919 users between April 1 and June 30, 2017.

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Top Rated Comments

Joe Rossignol Avatar
104 months ago
This study brought to you by AT&T and Verizon...
Why would AT&T and Verizon have their hands dirty with a story claiming their networks have become slower?
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
44267547 Avatar
104 months ago
TMobile continues to impress me. More and more they are growing and expanding coverage.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DTphonehome Avatar
104 months ago
OK, now take some of those profits from the monthly fees and use it to upgrade your networks. This is how competition is supposed to work. Oh, by the way, you might have to pay your executives a little bit less.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dmcwally Avatar
104 months ago
All networks need to stop being slum lords and actually invest in there capacity nationwide. Then this would not even be an issue. And sprint needs to invest in their coverage.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
xpxp2002 Avatar
104 months ago
All networks need to stop being slum lords and actually invest in there capacity nationwide. Then this would not even be an issue. And sprint needs to invest in their coverage.
They're too busy spending that cash lobbying to end net neutrality so they can charge even more for the same service/access you get today...
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
busyscott Avatar
104 months ago
Was on Verizon for a decade and switched to T-mobile two years ago. Amazing pricing, coverage keeps getting better (didn't have reception at my office when I first signed up, now I have full LTE there) but it's so cheap and you get so much more for your money. I've tried to go over my 10GB PER LINE and 20GB data pool PER LINE. I don't even know how I could use 30GB of data when Netflix and Apple Music doesn't count against data anyways. Happy to see them doing well.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)