Fastest Mobile Networks 2015

For the second year in a row, Verizon Wireless takes the crown as America's fastest mobile network by delivering the quickest speeds and the best coverage across the map. The nation's largest carrier has maintained the quality of its XLTE network in the face of stronger competition than ever. To some extent, everyone's a winner, because heightened competition is the big story of our sixth annual Fastest Mobile Networks testing. For the past six years, Verizon and AT&T have traded off winning the national title, largely because of far superior high-speed coverage when compared with Sprint and T-Mobile. But T-Mobile emerged as a force to be reckoned with in 2014, and now, for the first time, Sprint is competitive. The results show that the big four carriers didn't need to merge to succeed. They're doing just fine.

Focusing on coverage, we ran more test cycles than ever before: 131,000 cycles over 30 cities and thousands of miles of driving. Our new transportation partner, Chevrolet, lent us three vehicles equipped with AT&T OnStar 4G LTE so we could see if the big roof-mounted antenna improved coverage. We found a more competitive landscape than ever. Verizon won about half the cities and all the rural regions, like 2014. But the rest of the cities were almost equally split between AT&T, with strongholds in the Southeast and Texas, and T-Mobile, which was especially strong in Western cities.