Ookla Data Hints C-Band Could Change Who’s Going to be Fastest in the US

Data from Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence shows exactly how much C-band has already affected 5G performance in the week following its launch on January 19, and how that might impact Speedtest Global Index Market Analysis rankings. Ookla saw a week-over-week increase in median 5G download speed of 13 percent when looking at all operators combined. AT&T and T-Mobile both had slight increases (1 percent) in median download speed over 5G for all operators when comparing the seven days starting January 12 and ending January 19, with AT&T rising from 68.43 Mbps to 70.46 Mbps and T-Mobile increasing from 181.99 Mbps to 187.11 Mbps. This coincides with AT&T’s very selective rollout of C-band in eight markets and the fact that T-Mobile did not add new spectrum on January 19, though they did launch their 5G carrier aggregation that same day. Verizon Wireless saw the greatest performance gain of 50 percent after the C-band rollout, from 76.51 Mbps during the week starting January 19 to 116.29 Mbps at the end of the week. This massive improvement in speed shows the power of Verizon’s widespread deployment of C-band spectrum and C-band’s ability to deliver fast speeds. If Verizon continues to capitalize on their C-band rollout and add additional deployments, we could well see an upset in the US market rankings by the time of our next Speedtest Global Index Market Analysis.

[Isla McKetta is Head of Content at Ookla.]