OpenSignal declared T-Mobile US “the operator to beat” after it nearly swept top honours in the company’s mobile data measurements for Q4 2017.

In OpenSignal’s latest State of Mobile Networks report, T-Mobile bested its rivals for first place in 4G availability, 3G and 4G download speeds, overall download speed, and 3G latency. AT&T snuck a win in 4G latency.

T-Mobile edged out Verizon on 4G availability, with 93.14 per cent to Verizon’s 92.72 per cent. Sprint improved its score almost 9 percentage points year-on-year to 85.66 per cent, bringing it closer to parity with third-place AT&T, which had an availability score of 87 per cent. OpenSignal said Sprint’s LTE performance was the most improved, topping gains of 6 percentage points at T-Mobile and 5 percentage points each at Verizon and AT&T.

OpenSignal noted the availability measure is not a reflection of geographic coverage. Instead, it indicates how often OpenSignal users can connect to LTE on each operator’s network.

The wireless mapping company said onlookers shouldn’t underestimate the importance of AT&T’s latency win: “While latency doesn’t get as much attention as speed or availability, it’s becoming an important measure of the overall mobile network experience…Low latency connections mean VoIP and video communications services perform better and real-time gaming and augmented reality apps experience less lag time.”

Methodology dispute
OpenSignal said its results were based on over 5.9 million measurements taken from more than 237,000 devices between 1 October and 30 December 2017. However, Verizon has long-disputed OpenSignal’s findings: in February 2017 it called such crowdsourced findings “limited” and “non-scientific”.

In a statement, a Verizon representative told Mobile World Live: “Crowdsourced data has it’s place, but does not provide a true network head-to-head comparison”. Instead, Verizon pointed to “scientific studies like the latest RootMetrics reports” which it said “show a big difference in network performance”.