Opensignal is out with its latest report and it’s an interesting one. All of the major carriers tout their fastest flavor of 5G with a different marketing name. For T-Mobile its UC (Ultra Capacity), Verizon uses UWB (Ultra Wideband), and AT&T calls it 5G+. Now Opensignal has quantified how often these enhanced 5G connections are available, how fast they are, and more.
Following up on its broad mobile report on US carriers earlier this month, Opensignal published “Quantifying the new 5G Enhanced services in the US” as an industry-first report on its website.
“Opensignal has analyzed U.S. users’ mobile experience when they are connected to premium 5G services on the three U.S. carriers: AT&T’s 5G+, T-Mobile’s Ultra Capacity 5G (5G UC) and Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband (5G UW). For this analysis, we refer to all of these offerings as Enhanced 5G for convenience. These services offer a markedly better experience than 5G based on lower frequency bands, which are often reused from 4G.”
In the big picture, T-Mobile’s 5G UC and Verizon’s 5G UWB have almost identical average speeds but T-Mobile wins by a large margin for availability while Verizon offered a better experience for gaming, OTT voice services, and video experiences with its enhanced 5G.
Enhanced 5G comparison
Across the counties in the US that Opensignal saw 5G service from the carriers, T-Mobile led by a wide margin with 41.9% of them including 5G Ultra Capacity.
Meanwhile, Verizon’s 5G UWB was available in 11.7% of them and AT&T 5G+ was only available in a tiny 1.7%.
For speed, T-Mobile and Verizon were neck and neck for both average enhanced 5G download and upload performance:
However, Verizon took the top spot for gaming, voice, and video experiences, but all three carriers were relatively close:
In closing, Opensignal says:
“From this analysis it’s clear the launch of C-band from January 2022 has transformed the 5G landscape in the U.S. and made users’ experience with AT&T and Verizon more competitive with T-Mobile’s 5G and its 2.5 GHz mid-band spectrum. The results here are striking too because of the differences with the July 2022 Opensignal U.S. 5G Experience report.”
To check out all the details, check out the full enhanced 5G report.
For more guides on US carriers, check out our detailed walkthroughs:
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