Although the U.S. ranked #9 out of 68 countries for LTE coverage, it ranked #55 in data speeds
T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless are almost tied for the fastest U.S. LTE data speeds, according to OpenSignal, a network testing firm. However, the U.S. was ranked number nine in the world for coverage, but received failing grades for its LTE speeds overall.
Verizon was identified as having the most LTE coverage in America, followed by AT&T, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Sprint and C Spire Wireless.
Reports by OpenSignal, available here, ranked the U.S. as 55 out of 68 countries with 10 Mbps in download speed. The highest was New Zealand with 36 Mbps, followed by Singapore, 33 Mbps; Romania, 30 Mbps; and South Korea at 29 Mbps.
The report said that some of the earliest adopters of LTE — like the U.S., Japan, Sweden and Germany — are starting to fall behind in terms of data performance.
“In part, these older networks are suffering from their own success. In the U.S., for instance, LTE’s introduction in 2010 resulted in a huge base of LTE subscribers in the country today. Those subscribers are all competing for the same network resources, slowing down average speeds. In comparison, newer networks in South America and Europe are more lightly loaded. But the U.S. has also failed to keep up with the rest world in both spectrum and technology. All of the four major U.S. operators have been expanding into more frequency bands, but none have been able to match the capacity countries like South Korea and Singapore have plowed into their networks. The U.S. has also been much slower in moving to LTE-Advanced,” the report said.
OpenSignal says the data in their report comes from over 325,000 global OpenSignal app LTE users.
StarHub in Singapore, according to the report, has the fastest network with LTE at 39 Mbps; LGT of South Korea was the network with best coverage at 99.6%; and South Korea was the country with the best coverage at 97%.