Fastest Mobile Networks 2020

For our 11th year of speed testing major wireless networks across the country, we drove to 26 US cities to see if 5G lives up to the hype. The answer: Not quite yet. While Verizon regains the title of fastest mobile network in our first nationwide 4G and 5G test, the carrier still has very little coverage. And AT&T's and T-Mobile's 5G networks don't help their overall performance much.

Verizon takes the crown in 2020 in a tight race with AT&T. Of the 26 cities we tested, Verizon won 13 of them, AT&T took 12, and T-Mobile grabbed one. The good news is that speeds are generally up across the board for all carriers compared with 2019, even if that's largely the result of improved 4G performance rather than the emergence of 5G.

So Wait...5G Isn't as Fast as 4G? We admit it, we bought into the 5G hype. Carriers, phone makers, and chip makers alike have all been selling 5G as faster and more powerful than 4G, with lower latency. So I was shocked to see that our AT&T 5G results, especially, were slower than 4G results on the same network. All three US carriers showed significantly higher download speeds and better broadband reliability than they did in our 2019 tests. It's just that these gains, particularly on AT&T, are largely because of improvements in 4G, not 5G networks. The good news is, with few exceptions, you don't need to rush out and buy a 5G phone.