Ookla Speedtest Rankings Reveals Fastest Mobile and Broadband Services

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AT&T offers the fastest mobile service in the U.S. and Verizon has the fastest fixed service, according to the Q2 2020 Speedtest United States Market Report by Ookla.

On the mobile side, AT&T had a Speed Score of 41.23 in competitive geographies. It was followed by T-Mobile (33.69), Sprint (31.53) and Verizon Wireless (30.77). 

As Ookla explains, the Speed Score “incorporates a measure of each provider’s download and upload speed to rank network speed performance (90% of the final Speed Score is attributed to download speed and the remaining 10% to upload speed.)”

AT&T had a Consistency Score of 79.7, which was the highest in the group. The Consistency Score is the percentage of instances when thresholds of 5 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads were met.

On the fixed broadband side, Verizon had a Speed Score of (117.14), followed by Xfinity (107.89), Cox (102.11), Spectrum (94.96), AT&T Internet (82.78) and CenturyLink (36.18). Spectrum was tops in Consistency Score with 84.4.

Overall Speed Gains

The report showed a median download speed over mobile of 29 Mbps, a 15.8% increase compared to the second quarter of last year. The median upload speed was 5.74 Mbps, which was 15.2% slower than the year-ago quarter.

The median fixed broadband download speed was 86.04 Mbps, an increase of 19.6% compared to the second quarter of 2019. The median upload speed increased to 11.86 Mbps, a modest gain of 1.5%.

The testing also featured data from more than 1.6 million mobile and 18.9 million fixed broadband devices performing more than 85.1 million consumer-initiated operations.

An Ookla blog post noted that both mobile and broadband services experienced a dip in performance in March due to the sudden increase in use caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Speeds have rebounded on both delivery platforms since, the report said.