Verizon Wireless notched its third successive win as the nation's Fastest Mobile Network, with T-Mobile hot on its heels. The two carriers have staked out the premium and value positions in our huge smartphone market, with much of the difference coming in Verizon's still far-superior reliability outside of major citiesalthough T-Mobile is doing better there, too.

For our seventh annual drive test, we visited 30 major US cities and the countryside in between, testing six networks: all four major LTE networks, along with AT&T and T-Mobile 3G. (For more on those last two, see Whatever Happened to 3G?) We drove Audi A4 cars from Silvercar with Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ phones and custom field-test software written by Ookla, the creators of Speedtest.net. (Ookla is owned by PCMag's parent company, Ziff Davis.) We collected more than 178,000 data points. For more on how we tested, see our Methodology.

Either Verizon or AT&T have won our national award every year since 2010. Verizon deserves plenty of kudos for staying in the lead, and it's implemented impressive technologies to do so. The real drama in these tests has been watching T-Mobile and Sprint come back from their doldrums a few years ago. T-Mobile is either first or second in most cities now, a change that really took effect last year.

This year's story is that Sprint is finally back. We saw the beginning of this last year, but it really kicked into gear in 2016 with Sprint's new LTE Plus system, which uses two merged 20MHz channels to massively boost download speeds. Sprint's network is much more geared to downloads than to uploads, but the company argues that most smartphone users' lifestyles are, too. Sprint won three cities this year, and while it's still in fourth place nationwide, it placed third or second in many cities. Factor in how cheap Sprint's service plans are right now, and it becomes a carrier worth considering again.

Sprint and T-Mobile's improvements over the past few years emphasize something very important that every American needs to stay vigilant about: Having four competitive, nationwide networks is not only perfectly possible, it's good for America.

First with AT&T and T-Mobile in 2011, then with Sprint and T-Mobile in 2014, wireless companies said they simply couldn't survive, much less improve their networks, without merging. This year's results show once again that's not true. Just as T-Mobile became the "Uncarrier" and engineered a comeback after the first failed merger, it looks like Sprint's focus on building a network rather than trying to gobble up a competitor is really turning things around.

Winning Strategies

Verizon continues to lead through a combination of deep pockets, forward thinking, and a focus on building a network rather than trying to find quick-fix wins through corporate mergers. The company added to its spectrum bank with a $10 billion purchase in 2015, giving it 40MHz of the most commonly used LTE spectrum in 92 of the top 100 US cities. This year, it brought 2x20MHz carrier aggregation and 4x4 MIMO antennas to the table, technologies which sped up its network without requiring it to build or lease new towers or airwaves.

T-Mobile is also using 2x20MHz carrier aggregation for speeds, something the company calls "wideband LTE," but its real focus is on expanding coverage. T-Mobile built out LTE in many suburban and rural areas this year, and is poised to expand its reach much more as it starts to build out a bunch of low-frequency 700MHz licenses that it's currently in the middle of getting FCC approval for. T-Mobile now covers many areas where it had 2G or no coverage at all last year, for example, along the US-64 corridor in eastern North Carolina or in the northwest suburbs of the New York City metro area.

With Verizon and T-Mobile winning the smartphone wars for the moment, AT&T and Sprint are positioning themselves for the next battles.

Sprint has a gigantic swath of high-capacity, high-frequency spectrum that doesn't have much range. It recently rebranded this spectrum LTE Plus, devoted most of it to high download speeds, and have deployed it in larger cities. The plan is working: Sprint's speeds are now competitive, and the carrier's network is no longer the laughingstock it was in danger of becoming. But that's not Sprint's long-term strategy. John Saw, Sprint's current CTO, came from Clearwire, where he was a wizard of WISPs, which are wireless ISPs for primary Internet access. Sprint's necessarily dense 2.5GHz buildout positions it well for the super-high-speed urban millimeter-wave networks of the future, and potentially for busting open the tired old wired ISP monopolies. (For more on millimeter wave, see our story on Starry, a new WISP in Boston.)

Since appointing Glenn Lurie, the head of its emerging devices business, as CEO in late 2014, AT&T Mobility has been positioning itself as the premiere carrier for smart cities and the Internet of Things. This requires a different kind of network than something designed to be an ISP or for mobile video streaming: A smart city network should focus on reliability, broad coverage, and low latency, and if you look at our AT&T results, that's exactly what it's doing.

How much of this is necessity versus strategy? You could very well argue that AT&T's strategy fits with its spectrum layout of lots of fragmented little bits and bobs, while Sprint's is forced by the fact that most of its bandwidth only goes short distances from towers. Spectrum may still be destiny in the wireless world. So now we get to the two big things that may change our networks in 2017.

The Future: 600MHz and 5G

This year, the FCC is auctioning off its biggest swath of spectrum since 2008, a monstrous 126MHz of nation-spanning 600MHz that used to be old TV channels. Some of it is still used by TV channels, which would have to move, which means those chunks would take years for wireless carriers to take over.

AT&T, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon are all bidding in the auction, along with a bunch of smaller rural wireless carriers. Sprint is sitting it out, whether from lack of cash (as some analysts say) or from a strategy that focuses on higher frequency bands (as Saw says).

The auction will run through June, and T-Mobile has said it will start to be able to deploy networks in rural areas by the end of 2017. Combined with T-Mobile scooping up unused 700MHz spectrum this year, that could really open up rural Americans' wireless options.

Meanwhile, the 5G race has truly begun. What is 5G anyway? It depends on who you ask, but it's looking like the term describes a combination of super-high-speed, super-high-frequency, relatively short-distance wireless networks with towers every few blocks, along with ways to seamlessly integrate Wi-Fi and cellular.

As I was writing this, I got a press release about Sprint demonstrating 2Gbps speeds at a soccer field. T-Mobile's CTO Neville Ray has said 5G won't be a big consumer deal until 2020 or so, but Verizon and AT&T are both looking at fixed wireless 5G applications within the next two years. Along with its obvious applications as a home ISP alternative, I wouldn't be surprised to see 5G used as supplementary backhaul to lessen choked-up 4G networks during conventions and sports games.

For 2016, though, Verizon is the nation's fastest mobile network. That said, it only won about half of our cities, and the competition is catching up, which is great news for users. Page through our city profiles to see which of the four major carriers won in your city or region, or head to the next page for our national and regional summaries.

Regional and National Winners

Regional and National Winners

National: Verizon 4G

Verizon Wireless won more of our cities and rural areas than any other carrier, which makes it the Fastest Mobile Network nationwide. The nation's largest wireless carrier had the fastest and most consistently broadband-like download speeds in testing, as well as some breathtaking peak speeds. As long as you're using a recent phone that's capable of carrier aggregation, you're likely to get a speedy result on Verizon's well-built 4G network.

T-Mobile came in second place, winning almost as many cities as Verizon. The carrier has worked hard to keep up speeds and especially to expand coverage this year, and we saw far fewer 2G zones than we did in last year's tests. That said, in some cities, T-Mobile's spectacular customer success this year has caused a bit of network congestionnot enough to really hurt it, but enough to keep the carrier out of the lead.

AT&T and Sprint are both doing pretty well. Their weakness was primarily on uploads rather than downloads, and uploads make up 20 percent of our Speed Score.

National - 4G

National - 3G

Northeast: T-Mobile

Within the Northeast, T-Mobile took New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, while AT&T took Pittsburgh, and Verizon took Washington DC and our suburban/rural areas. T-Mobile has done an undeniably impressive job of lighting up the dense cities and suburbs of the Boston-Washington corridor with fast 4G LTE, and its made New York City a showcase for what it can do. The winner only weakened when it got farther west into Pennsylvania and especially West Virginia, which it doesn't cover at all.

Northeast - 4G

Northeast - 3G

Southeast: AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon

It's a three-way tie! We've never seen that before in our seven years of testing. In our Southeast region, T-Mobile won Raleigh and Nashville, AT&T won Charlotte and the rural areas, and Verizon won Atlanta and Miami. The real news here is T-Mobile taking Raleigh away from AT&T, as North Carolina has long been an AT&T stronghold. T-Mobile has been greatly improving its North Carolina coverage recently, even without the help of its 700MHz Extended Range LTE service. We'd still rely on AT&T for comprehensive coverage across North Carolina, though.

Southeast - 4G

Southeast - 3G

North Central: Verizon

In the North Central region, Sprint won Columbus while Verizon took Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, and the rural drives. Verizon's dominance here is pretty complete, with maximum speeds regularly over 100Mbps.

North Central - 4G

North Central - 3G

South Central: AT&T

AT&T's heartland is the South Central part of the country. In this region, T-Mobile took Austin and Verizon took Dallas, but AT&T took Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Houston, and the rural areas.

AT&T didn't win a lot of cities this year, but its network in states like Texas and Oklahoma is excellent. I'd point out the carrier's relatively low ping times here, which play a big role in making Web pages feel responsive, but are also key for the kind of smart city initiatives that AT&T wants to lead on.

South Central - 4G

South Central - 3G

Northwest: Verizon

In the Northwest region, Sprint won Seattle, T-Mobile won Portland and Boise, and Verizon won San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and the rural areas.

In the Mountain West, coverage really matters, and we found that Verizon has a much broader, more reliable network than its competitors. It's no shirker on speed and capacity, either, delivering the best experience in the crowded San Francisco area.

Sprint's win in Seattle augurs a much more competitive experience in the Northwest, though. And next year, T-Mobile will back up its excellent Boise speeds with broader coverage in Idaho when a spectrum purchase currently under review by the FCC closes.

Northwest - 4G

Northwest - 3G

Southwest: Verizon

Sprint took Las Vegas, T-Mobile took Phoenix and San Diego, and Verizon took Tucson, LA, and the rural areas.

This was a tough call, but we're giving it to Verizon, three to two. Arizona and Southern California are highly competitive between Verizon and T-Mobile, and T-Mobile's coverage is a lot better than it used to be thanks to its new Extended Range LTE. Verizon's LA performance was stellar. While Sprint won in Las Vegas, it hasn't deployed its latest technologies in Tucson or San Diego, which held it back in the regional results.

Southwest - 4G

Southwest - 3G

Carrier and Network Profiles

Carrier and Network Profiles

AT&T has focused on building a consistent, reliable network rather than achieving blistering top speeds. Without a single broad swath of spectrum to park giant LTE channels on, the company has been devoting various new frequency bands to making sure that its network never stalls out or feels overloaded. If you're experiencing extreme slowness on AT&T, look for a new phone with LTE bands 29 and 30, which combine with others to make sure your connections don't gutter out. AT&T's focus on reliability, and lack of very broad LTE channels, means that in most of the cities where it won, such as Charlotte, Oklahoma City, and New Orleans, it did so by dominating the consistency-focused parts of our speed score measurement.

The carrier's sales pitch for machine-to-machine and smart city applications also requires a strong 3G network, and AT&T is doing a good job of maintaining 3G as it prepares to turn off its 2G network in January.

Sprint is this year's big surprise. The carrier spent from 2010-2014 in the doghouse, started to come back in 2015, and now actually has a competitive LTE network, winning awards in Columbus, Las Vegas, and Seattle. Sprint's network isn't designed like any other: it's heavily biased for downloads over uploads. If we were just talking about download speeds, Sprint would have won San Francisco as well, which is just crazy. Since Sprint leans heavily on very high-frequency spectrum for its LTE network, it still has some coverage issues, and it hasn't accelerated to its maximum speeds nationwide. But it's great to see the carrier's comeback.

T-Mobile has maintained its runner-up spot from last year, although its performance declined a bit from 2015. We're chalking that up to the paradox of success: T-Mobile has been gaining customers by the millions, and all of their unlimited BingeOn video streaming and Music Freedom audio streaming has been clogging things up a bit. That said, performance was still excellent, and T-Mobile beat Verizon in nearly half of our cities. The carrier has also dramatically extended its suburban and rural coverage using its 700MHz spectrum, and looks to be doing a lot more of that next year, including notorious weak spots like the Mountain West.

Verizon continues to do basically everything right. While T-Mobile and Sprint have been crowing their heads off about network improvements, it turns out that Verizon has been quietly implementing many of the same advances. Verizon's 2x20 carrier aggregation and 4x4 MIMO match what T-Mobile has been trumpeting, and we see the results with Verizon's nationwide win. The only concern is that Verizon does not have a deep bench of unused spectrum, the way Sprint has a huge amount of 2500MHz available and T-Mobile has been buying up 700MHz around the country. The carrier could start to see congestion if usage continues to increase.

Most of the other carriers you hear about use one or several of these networks. The only exception is U.S. Cellular, which runs its own network but doesn't cover enough of our testing area to evaluate properly. Here's a quick cheat sheet:

Boost Mobile: Sprint

Consumer Cellular: AT&T

Cricket Wireless: AT&T

Google Project Fi: The better of Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular

H2O Wireless: AT&T

Lyca Mobile: T-Mobile

MetroPCS: T-Mobile

Net10: AT&T or T-Mobile

Page Plus: Verizon

Republic Wireless: Sprint or T-Mobile

Ringplus: Sprint

Simple Mobile: T-Mobile

Straight Talk: Could be any, depending on device

TextNow: Sprint

Ting: Sprint or T-Mobile

The People's Operator: Sprint

TracFone: Could be any, depending on device

Ultra Mobile: T-Mobile

Univision Mobile: T-Mobile

US Mobile: T-Mobile

Virgin Mobile: Sprint

Walmart Family Mobile: T-Mobile

ZIP SIM (formerly Ready SIM): T-Mobile

Whatever Happened to 3G?

Whatever Happened to 3G?

Our nation's 3G networks are now about ten years old. It's time to start saying goodbye.

Third-generation cellular technologies, including HSPA and EVDO, ushered in the modern age of smartphones. But in the past three years, they've been outpaced by 4G LTE, which offers far greater speed and capacity for the same spectrum usage. Low-cost phones were the last bastion of 3G-only capability, but now you see even budget, prepaid smartphones like the $100 T-Mobile Catalyst porting LTE. That leaves voice-first "safety" phones, such as AT&T's SpareOne Emergency Phone, as the primary users of 3G networks.

AT&T and T-Mobile's 3G networks can offer decent speeds of 3-5Mbps, although they've declined over the past few years as the carriers have devoted formerly 3G airwaves to LTE. Verizon and Sprint's 2G and 3G CDMA networks haven't changed measurably in several years. They're used almost entirely for voice and text, not data, and their sub-1Mbps data speeds wouldn't satisfy anyone in this broadband era. Verizon and Sprint agreed with us that it's not worth running speed tests on those networks any longer.

Carriers are looking at turning off 2G, but 3G will stay alive for many years. AT&T is entirely shutting down its 2G network by January 2017, making it a purely 3G/4G carrier. T-Mobile hasn't announced an actual shutdown date for 2G, but said it's reducing both 2G and 3G network capacity to the absolute minimum and focusing on LTE. You can see that in our test results. T-Mobile used to run HSPA+ 42, with real-world speeds up to about 20Mbps, but now it's by and large back to HSPA 14.4.

The primary reason 3G and 2G are staying alive doesn't have to do with phones. It's because of machine-to-machine modules, which transfer very small amounts of data, have long lifespans, and don't need high speeds. The little gadgets in vending machines, water meters, and smart public trash cans will eventually be replaced by LTE or even 5G modules, but the carriers are giving their business customers another decade or so to make that transition.

There are still areas where 3Gand even 2Gare important. We mapped out our drives, and of the four major carriers, Sprint by far still relies the most heavily on 3G. We got 3G hits on Sprint in most of Utah and Nevada, a startling amount of California, long stretches of Alabama, Kentucky, and central Pennsylvania, and the mountains of Virginia, for example. That puts Sprint at a severe disadvantage in rural areas, as its 3G network doesn't provide acceptable data performance.

We found that all of the carriers had long stretches of 2G and 3G in far Northern California and central Idaho. T-Mobile dropped back to 2G in rural Virginia, Idaho, and far Northern California. AT&T had big swaths of 3G in Northern Arizona, Southern Oregon, central Utah, central Pennsylvania, and both Virginia and West Virginia.

On the individual city pages, you'll find our charts and ratings for the AT&T and T-Mobile 3G networks. The difference from past years is striking. Because T-Mobile came late to LTE, for a while it had an extremely fast 3G network. But now its 3G has slowed down as its airwaves are redirected to LTE. T-Mobile has also always had long 3G ping times, part of a power-saving move where its phones rest in a low-power mode, taking a longer time to negotiate with towers about their maximum 3G speeds than AT&T phones do. That makes AT&T's 3G network the faster one nationwide.

Testing Methodology

Testing Methodology

For our seventh year of testing, we switched both software and car providers. This year, we used custom field-test software designed by Ookla, the creators of Speedtest.net. (Ookla is owned by PCMag's parent company, Ziff Davis.)The software was loaded onto six Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ phones, which were driven around in three Audi A4 cars rented from Silvercar.

Running every three minutes, Ookla tests uploads and downloads, as well as ping times to a nearby, randomized, neutral (non-carrier) server. The software locks the phones together so they were all pinging against the same server in any given test.

We stopped at between 12 and 15 locations, for at least 15 minutes each, in our 30 cities. We averaged the data in each location, then averaged the locations together for an overall city result. The aggregated data from traveling between the test locations counted into the overall averages as two more locations.

Along with our 30 cities, we report suburban/rural areas, which are summaries of the drives between the metro areas. Our six regional scores are averages of the five cities in each region, plus the suburban/rural score. Our national score is an average of the 30 cities and six suburban/rural regions.

We tested mostly during business hours, from May 2 through May 23, 2016. We visited different cities on different days. We ended up with about 178,000 data points, which we processed through a MySQL database and summarized on an Excel 2010 spreadsheet.

The PCMag Speed Score

The PCMag Speed Score is a weighted average that looks at six components of the mobile data experience.

Since we're using different software this year, we took a fresh look at the components of our speed score. This year, we decided to amp up download consistency from 10 percent to 20 percent, but left most of the other components the same.

Since most mobile Internet usage is Web page downloads or small-screen video streaming, it's just as important to have a consistent experience as a fast one. Smartphone users may not be able to see the difference between 20Mbps and 100Mbps, but they can definitely feel the difference between 2Mbps and 5Mbps. So we created a "threshold score" showing the percentage of downloads over 5Mbps, and the percentage of uploads over 2Mbps.

To create our reliability score, we counted the number of tests and divided by the number of non-zero LTE uploads and downloads. Stalled tests, or areas without LTE coverage, received reduced scores.

Here's how it all came together:

Average download speed (20 percent)

Downloads over 5Mbps threshold (20 percent)

Average upload speed (10 percent)

Uploads over 2Mbps threshold (10 percent)

Ping time (20 percent)

Reliability score (20 percent)

Renting With Silvercar

Silvercar

Renting With Silvercar

This year, we partnered with Silvercar for our vehicles. It's not a traditional car rental firm, it's not a taxi service, and it doesn't require a subscription. The entire rental process is handled through an app, so you never have to deal with high-pressure sales staff. You always get a silver Audi A4 (it's the only car the company carries) with Sirius XM satellite radio and a Wi-Fi hotspot. And your bill is clearer and simpler than you'll get from a traditional car rental agency.

Over the past several years, we have driven many cars for this project, including Ford cars, GM cars, and random rental cars. Nothing charged up our drivers like these Audi A4s. Two of our drivers said they were unprepared for the smooth acceleration and sharp handling, and one said the responsive brakes kept him out of a hairy situation with a truck in Pennsylvania.

Our drivers really liked the cars' built-in GPS and easy radio controls. Silvercar's customer service is also top notch: When one of our drivers couldn't start the car, she got a customer service rep on the phone very quickly to talk her through the process.

Silvercar's locations can be a bit hard to find, though. They are typically off-airport, and in the case of its Manhattan location, hidden deep in an apartment building's parking garage. You'll have to call or text Silvercar at most of its locations so someone can come and get you. When you drop off your car, a Silvercar employee will drive you back to the airport terminal.

You can find less expensive car rentals than Silvercar. The company's experience is about packaging together a bunch of luxury experiences simply, not about being the cheapest. Rentals in Chicago are $69/day plus taxes and fees. In LA, it's $79/day. In Brooklyn or Dallas, you pay $89/day.

The base rate for a midsize car from Budget at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport for the same dates is $61, and you can get smaller cars for as little as $41/day. But with other companies, GPS costs extra (usually around $6/day), toll transponders cost another $4/day, and if you can get a portable Wi-Fi hotspot with your rental car, that can be another $10/day. All this is included with Silvercar.

Also, your average rental car isn't an Audi.

Atlanta, GA

Atlanta, GA: Verizon

Verizon wrested back Atlanta from T-Mobile thanks to extremely strong performance at several of our test sites, most notably near the Perimeter Center and in Buckhead. At a long stop at the Perimeter Center, we consistently got download speeds over 100Mbps, which is very unusual.

Interestingly, T-Mobile's network was slightly more consistent and reliable in Atlanta. T-Mobile dominated other competitors on the east side of the metro area, near Decatur.

As we saw in several other cities, Sprint's newly competitive speeds were a pleasant surprise. Its high-frequency network did best at some of our test sites in Atlanta's densest areas, such as downtown and in Little Five Points. We also found no Sprint dead spots citywide, which is a huge leap forward for the carrier.

AT&T, which once dominated the South, showed the weakest performance of the four major carriers in terms of speed. While our AT&T phone connected reliably, it had the largest number of tests coming out under our threshold for good speeds, showing a congested network where the number of bars you see doesn't actually reflect performance.

Atlanta - 4G

Atlanta - 3G

Atlanta - Map

Austin, TX

Austin

Austin, TX: T-Mobile

A solid, well-balanced network with low ping times gave T-Mobile the win in Austin over competitors with noticeably higher download speeds.

Austin wasn't one of our fastest cities; we didn't see the kinds of 100Mbps peak speeds we saw in some other metro areas. It's interesting because each of the carriers has a different strength here. If you're looking for consistent download speeds citywide, Verizon did better than the other 4G carriers. If all you want is to stream your head off at high download speeds, Sprint's peak downloads outpace anyone else. But for Web page downloads (which are heavily reliant upon ping) and social media uploads, T-Mobile rules.

Texas in general has been a highly competitive market for our carriers, and we see that with the different winners in our various Texas cities: T-Mobile won Austin, while Verizon took Dallas, and AT&T grabbed Houston.

Austin - 4G

Austin - 3G

Austin - map

Boise, ID

Boise

Boise, ID: T-Mobile

This one comes with a big asterisk. T-Mobile had by far the best upload and download speeds in our tests in Boise, Meridian, and Eagle, no question about it. In the urbanized parts of the Boise metro area, T-Mobile is the fastest mobile network by a long shot.

With that out of the way: Idahoans are stuck choosing between speed and coverage. Both T-Mobile and Sprint generally cling to the I-84 corridor; our T-Mobile drive testing map shows no LTE coverage outside Boise, Twin Falls, and Mountain Home, and no coverage at all in the national forests. If you're looking for comprehensive coverage in Idaho, you probably already know you need to go with Verizon, which is the slowest of the four major carriers in urban Boise.

There's good news coming for T-Mobile subscribers in Idaho, though. Much of the state is covered either by existing T-Mobile 700MHz licenses or by the new licenses the company just bought from three smaller carriers, and it should be rolling out broader LTE coverage by next year. So switching to T-Mobile may be an investment in the future.

Boise - 4G

Boise - 3G

Boise - map

Boston, MA

Boston

Boston, MA: T-Mobile

Boston was a tight race between AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, with T-Mobile pulling out the win thanks to high upload speeds and low latency. Both AT&T and T-Mobile outpaced Verizon in the upscale suburbs of Brighton and Newton. But T-Mobile wasn't strong everywhere, guttering out a bit in South Boston. If you haven't used T-Mobile in New England recently, it's worth noting that the carrier has deployed its 700MHz Extended Range LTE throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southern New Hampshire, dramatically improving coverage.

Sprint's high-speed 40MHz carrier aggregation buildout doesn't seem to be as complete in Boston as in some other cities. Looking at our speed heat map, Boston has a pattern of islands of good speed for Sprint surrounded by seas of lower speeds, showing that its Spark towers aren't quite reaching far enough to knit the citywide high-speed network together.

Boston - 4G

Boston - 3G

Boston - map

Charlotte, NC

Charlotte

Charlotte, NC: AT&T

AT&T may always have Charlotte. The company has won the Charlotte area time and again, and as before, it has backed up its Charlotte performance with strong results across North Carolina. Second place in Charlotte goes to the newly resurgent Sprint, which had even greater maximum speeds than AT&T did, but AT&T secured a firm win with a more consistent network offering more similar speeds and lower latency across the city. T-Mobile's strength on uploads couldn't fix its weakness on downloads.

Zooming out, we saw excellent coverage for AT&T through North Carolina and Virginia, especially in rural areas and past smaller cities.

Charlotte - 4G

Charlotte - 3G

Charlotte - map

Chicago, IL

Chicago

Chicago, IL: Verizon

Verizon blows away the competition in the Windy City. Its peak speed of 151Mbps in Chicago was so high I had to double check it, but yep, it's real. Speeds downtown were especially strong for Verizon, with a consistent, blistering 125Mbps on the Near North Side. AT&T came in a respectable second, but a close look at its numbers shows that it's focused on ping, which is the critical number for smart city technologies like self-driving cars. That's where AT&T's future really lies.

T-Mobile appears to be suffering from congestion effects in Chicago. While its reliability was nearly perfect, speeds were very slow, pushing below our 5Mbps download threshold too often. The carrier may just have signed up more customers in Chicago than it can handle at the moment. While it doesn't have its 700MHz Extended Range LTE in Chicago, it's deploying the system next year, which may ease congestion.

Sprint showed high peak speeds, but with a network that doesn't quite cover everywhere in the city. We got low speeds on Sprint in Jackson Park and at Midway Airport, which more than balanced out the high speeds on the Near North Side (where all the carriers did well). Sprint's use of high-frequency 2500MHz spectrum for its speediest network means it needs to set up more antennas than other carriers to reach peak speeds, and it may still be building out in Chicago.

Chicago - 4G

Chicago - 3G

Chicago - map

Columbus, OH

Columbus

Columbus, OH: Sprint

Ping matters. Our measurement of ping, which tells us how long it takes a remote server to acknowledge a contact, counted for 20 percent of our score and plays a big role in experiences like Web page downloads, which are made of many small files. In Columbus, Sprint's lower-than-average ping times really made a difference. Sprint also had the most consistent 4G experience, with the most download over 5Mbps.

This is all part of Sprint's huge comeback this year. While the carrier only won a few cities, it showed spectacular peak download speeds nationwide with its new LTE Plus carrier aggregation scheme. If our scores were geared more purely toward downloads, Sprint would have won even more; the carrier's weakness is that it has relatively slow upload speeds. But as Sprint execs have pointed out to me, we do a lot more downloading than uploading anyway.

T-Mobile's second-place finish is impressive considering it doesn't yet have its Extended Range 700MHz spectrum live in Columbus yet (that may be coming next year). T-Mobile has been historically weak throughout Ohio and Indiana, but it looks like the carrier has finally shaken that spell.

Verizon had some of the best peak speeds in Columbus, but they weren't as reliable as T-Mobile or Sprint's speeds citywide.

Columbus - 4G

Columbus - 3G

Columbus - map

Dallas, TX

Dallas

Dallas, TX: Verizon

Dallas has always been a fast, competitive city in our tests, as its flat geography and suburban layout tends to be kind to 4G networks. We saw positively blazing download speeds from both Sprint and Verizon here, with Verizon topping out at a reliable 100Mbps by the Market Center.

Looking deeper into the results, Verizon's numbers were marked by solid reliability and high speeds all over the city, while Sprint wobbled a lot more, with incredible speeds at SMU, but slow results in Casa Linda. Sprint's LTE Plus system works best in dense urban areas and in places like stadiums and campuses, and I suspect the carrier has laid down a solid network right on the SMU campus.

T-Mobile's slow speeds in Dallas surprised us, because Dallas has long been a core market for T-Mobile, where the company tests new technologies. Much like we saw in Chicago and on a college campus in Detroit, T-Mobile's speedy customer growth may just be causing some growing pains.

Dallas - 4G

Dallas - 3G

Dallas - map

Detroit, MI

Detroit

Detroit, MI: Verizon

We saw some killer peak speeds on three of the major carriers in Detroit, but Verizon gave us by far the best speeds citywide. Verizon's average download speeds, nearing 50Mbps, were some of the fastest we saw anywhere in the country, and the carrier combined that with industry-leading ping times to make for a very clear win throughout Detroit.

Once average speeds are as high as we're seeing in Detroit, the ability to deliver those speeds reliably becomes even more important than hitting big numbers occasionally. Verizon led there too, with far more downloads above our 5Mbps threshold than we saw on other carriers.

T-Mobile actually hit the highest peak speeds in Detroit with a scorching 122Mbps, but it was held back by a slow result on the Wayne State campus, among a few other places. This fits with the reports we've heard about the carrier struggling a little this year under its own popularity; Wayne State students are a prime T-Mobile demographic, so it would make sense that the network there is under some strain.

Detroit - 4G

Detroit - 3G

Detroit - map

Houston, TX

Houston, TX: AT&T

Yee-haw. AT&T's peak performance in Houston is definitely something to crow about. We got 119Mbps down on Main Street just south of the Texas Medical Center, showing that AT&T's various network improvements are all coming together in Houston, most notably carrier aggregation and 2.3GHz WCS spectrum. AT&T's network also had very short ping times, which makes for speedy Web page downloads and prepares the network well for self-driving cars and other smart city technologies.

Other carrier have their strengths, too. The highest average download speeds actually went to Sprint, which has juiced up its LTE Plus network in Houston to a startling extent. We got speeds over 100Mbps down with Sprint at multiple locations in Houston, making it a great choice for heavy downloaders who are looking for unlimited data. Social media mavens may prefer T-Mobile for its low ping times and high upload speeds, which are ideal for posting Snapchat after Snapchat.

Houston - 4G

Houston - 3G

Houston - map

Kansas City, MO

Kansas City

Kansas City, MO: Verizon

Sprint's hometown of Kansas City has quietly become one of the best-connected cities in the nation. Not only is it a major wireless carrier battleground, it has both Google Fiber and a municipal broadband provider, as well as a network of free-to-use Internet kiosks around downtown.

Burgeoning startups in Kansas City will be impressed by how much Verizon turned up its LTE network recently, with download speeds bordering on what you normally get from cable Internet. We saw a consistent 100Mbps at the Uptown Theater on Broadway. Verizon's amazing download speeds make it the clear winner for the fastest mobile network in Kansas City.

But still, Sprint's no shirker here, and heavy data users may find the carrier's unlimited data plans hard to resist. Sprint showed very good download speeds in Kansas City, although the carrier has designed its network to privilege downloads over uploads, so content creators will find it a less speedy experience than video streamers.

Kansas City - 4G

Kansas City - 3G

Kansas City - map

Las Vegas, NV

Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV: Sprint

Sprint finally wins Las Vegas after its dramatic improvement last year. The difference this year is LTE Plus, its high-speed, relatively short-distance network, which works well when it's laid down densely. It looks like Sprint indeed laid LTE Plus down densely in Las Vegas: Our maps showed solid, continuous LTE coverage around the main body of the metro area, dropping down to 3G only in Boulder City. That makes Sprint a great bet for Sin City.

None of the major carriers showed spectacular speeds in Las Vegas this year, and they all had some slow spots. But T-Mobile fell to earth the hardest, to an extent where I had to double-check that our tests at the Stratosphere and on Sunset behind the airport were indeed on LTE. But they were, just on apparently totally saturated LTE. As we saw in several other cities, T-Mobile may be suffering from its massive recent success in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas - 4G

Las Vegas - 3G

Las Vegas - map

Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA: Verizon

Verizon established a commanding lead in Los Angeles, with the best download and upload speeds and the lowest ping times, making it a clear winner. While other carriers showed high peak speeds, only Verizon could maintain them consistently over our 18 tests in this sprawling metro area. Both Sprint and T-Mobile, which showed some extremely fast speeds, had trouble connecting at multiple locations in the county.

Verizon scored its best speeds in Beverly Hills and at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, while Sprint did well down in Inglewood and T-Mobile was fastest up by Universal City. With so much area to cover, though, Verizon's comprehensive network really pays off.

Los Angeles - 4G

Los Angeles - 3G

Los Angeles - map

Miami, FL

Miami

Miami, FL: Verizon

Verizon blew away all the other carriers in Miami on both upload and download speeds, hands down.

Taking a close look at the results, all of the other carriers had at least one location where they nearly zeroed out, but Verizon had none. Verizon hit 100Mbps in North Miami Beach, a nice flat area where signals transmit well. In that very same location, Sprint struggled along at basically 3G speeds. AT&T and T-Mobile both had trouble in one of our downtown tests.

Miami - 4G

Miami - 3G

Miami - map

Nashville, TN

Nashville

Nashville, TN: T-Mobile

Our measures of consistency made all the difference in Nashville. Networks are slow in Nashville, especially when compared with Texas and the Northeast. I was startled to see that only Verizon broke 50Mbps as a peak; typically, all four carriers do.

But Verizon's high peak and average speeds were balanced out by greater consistency from T-Mobile. Verizon's speeds fluctuated, with higher peaks but lower troughs, while T-Mobile more consistently delivered speeds over the 5Mbps we judge as a true mobile broadband experience.

If you travel much out of the city, you should still go with Verizon for coverage, though. T-Mobile's coverage in Tennessee is better than it used to bewe found nonstop LTE all along the I-24 and I-75 corridorsbut the carrier's official coverage map still has big dead spots northeast of Lebanon and across a surprisingly long stretch of US-64 toward Memphis. T-Mobile's coverage may get dramatically better later this year when it turns on the 700MHz spectrum it recently acquired from C Spire. That frequency band covers rural areas well.

Nashville - 3G

Nashville - map

New Orleans, LA

New Orleans

New Orleans, LA: AT&T

The region we call South Central has long been an AT&T heartland, all the way since the Southwestern Bell days. We're definitely seeing that in our 2016 results, where AT&T took New Orleans, Houston, and Oklahoma City, and put in a second-place showing in Austin.

AT&T's win in New Orleans isn't about peak download speedsSprint had the highest download averagesbut about balancing all of the components that make for a fast network. Most notably, AT&T had the lowest ping times, which are critical to a fast Web page experience. They're also critical to smart cities and the Internet of Things, which is a major AT&T strategy right now. AT&T's coverage in the area is also terrific. We saw unbroken LTE throughout our Louisiana drive, while T-Mobile and Sprint cut out from time to time.

Let's not underestimate Sprint's improvement in recent years in the New Orleans area, though. Sprint matched AT&T and T-Mobile on reliability, and beat them on average download speeds, with its new LTE Plus network.

New Orleans - 4G

New Orleans - 3G

New Orleans - map

New York, NY

New York City

New York, NY: T-Mobile

New York City has been a battleground between T-Mobile and Verizon for a few years, and the two carriers are now in a virtual tie. Verizon showed faster download speeds in New York, but T-Mobile's slightly better upload speeds and overall network consistency let it edge out a win.

T-Mobile's numbers are better than last year, likely due to its 700MHz Extended Range LTE, which it turned on in New York City in December. While that doesn't push top download speeds higher, it smooths out the network and fills in the gaps, resulting in T-Mobile's perfect reliability score across the city in our tests.

Sprint's comeback is the other story in New York. Sprint's new LTE Plus network can achieve blistering download speeds, and only suffered because it's designed to privilege downloads over uploads, which make up 20 percent of our score.

New York City - 4G

New York City - 3G

New York - map

Oklahoma City, OK

Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City, OK: AT&T

AT&T showed the strongest performance overall in our 12 tests in the Oklahoma City area. While we didn't see stunning speeds from any carrier, AT&T had the best-balanced network, with higher upload and download speeds more often than any of the others.

Sprint's poor performance in Oklahoma City is like a flashback to two years ago. The problem here is that OKC lacks Sprint's new LTE Plus network, which is giving the carrier all of its recent gains. Until that gets installed, Sprint won't be a viable competitor.

Oklahoma City - 4G

Oklahoma City - 3G

Oklahoma City - map

Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia

Philadelphia, PA: T-Mobile

Philadelphia was a slow city all around for our carriers, but let's talk about ping for a moment. Ping is how long it takes for a device to first hear back from an Internet server. It plays a big role in how fast Web pages feel to load, as Web pages are made of a lot of small files. We made ping into 20 percent of our score, and T-Mobile's shorter ping times are how it won in Philadelphia even though it had the lowest average download speeds of the four major carriers.

AT&T came in second place, once more without terribly inspiring download speeds. But like T-Mobile, AT&T delivered a reliable experience without any failures, and had a good balance between upload and download speeds. Sprint had surprisingly good download speeds, but fell short on uploads. Verizon, meanwhile, beat T-Mobile on downloads but suffered on both ping times and reliability, giving us shaky connections at test locations in Manayunk and at Penn.

It's clear Philadelphia needs some network upgrades for all four carriers.

Philadelphia - 4G

Philadelphia - 3G

Philadelphia - map

Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix

Phoenix, AZ: T-Mobile

T-Mobile established a commanding lead in Phoenix, with the fastest upload and download speeds, as well as the most reliable downloads. If you intend to stream, shoot, or Snapchat, T-Mobile's network will give you the best experience in Phoenix.

T-Mobile would have actually done even better had it not been for a dead spot in Glendale which introduced a near-zero value into our citywide average. That got smoothed out over our 11 other test locations, but the fact that T-Mobile won even while hitting that patch speaks to how fast its Phoenix network is right now.

Phoenix - 4G

Phoenix - 3G

Phoenix - map

Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, PA: AT&T

We haven't been back to Pittsburgh in a few years, but it made our list this year. The city's hilly topography tends to be tough for wireless carriers, with speeds falling if you round a hill that doesn't have a tower on the appropriate side. We definitely saw these terrain effects take place, with some of our slowest speeds down at the bottom of the north slope of Mount Washington, and considerably faster speeds on the flatter terrain of the North Side. The terrain impacted Sprint's coverage and speed dramatically.

With such rugged terrain, reliability and consistency matter, and that's how AT&T won out in Pittsburgh. AT&T showed competitive speeds, but most importantly it scored best in all three of our reliability-based categories, which count for 50 percent of the overall score. While none of the four carriers delivered industry-leading speeds in Pittsburgh, it looks like AT&T is the carrier you can really rely on there.

Pittsburgh - 4G

Pittsburgh - 3G

Pittsburgh - map

Portland, OR

Portland

Portland, OR: T-Mobile

T-Mobile has had a strong position in the Pacific Northwest for a few years now, and it continues to dominate Portland with epic speeds. It screamed across most of our city center test sites, with the only slow spot coming out by the airport. We got a solid 102Mbps down in Northwest Portland. And if you count out that one slow spot, all 13 of our other primary test locations had perfect reliability for downloads over 5Mbps.

Sprint's performance looks good until you realize we socked it for weak uploads. Sprint made a conscious choice to devote more of its network to downloads than uploads, figuring that people spend more time consuming content than creating it. We agree40 percent of our score is downloads while 20 percent is uploadsbut the difference was just too much for Sprint to overcome in our scores. That said, if you're more of a downloader than an uploader, it's time to look at Sprint's inexpensive service plans.

Portland - 4G

Portland - 3G

Portland - map

Raleigh-Durham, NC

Raleigh

Raleigh-Durham, NC: T-Mobile

T-Mobile didn't show the best peak speeds in the Raleigh-Durham area, but it achieved good speeds much more reliably than any competing carrier. That's a little surprising because T-Mobile's coverage in North Carolina isn't the best: the carrier lacks its 700MHz Extended Range LTE spectrum here, which helps penetrate the thick tree cover you'll find in more suburban areas like Cary.

If coverage concerns you, AT&T is the way to go in Raleigh, and it fought T-Mobile to a near-standstill overall. AT&T not only had very fast download speeds, it also had access to 700MHz spectrum. Your part of the metro area may also play a factor in your carrier choice. AT&T did better than T-Mobile in suburban North and East Raleigh, but T-Mobile did better in downtown Durham and Chapel Hill.

Raleigh-Durham

Raleigh - 3G

Raleigh - map

Salt Lake City, UT

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City, UT: Verizon

Verizon Wireless scorched the other players in Salt Lake City, with download speeds 80 percent higher than the competition and an insane maximum of 125Mbps down. Verizon also has broad coverage in the populated parts of Utah, so you don't need to feel like you're making any compromises here: If you go with Verizon, you're getting the best network on the Silicon Slopes.

Nationwide trends play out for the three other carriers. T-Mobile comes in a solid second, as it does in urban areas nationwide. It'll get even more competitive next year when a new license purchase for 700MHz spectrum closes, giving the carrier better coverage. Sprint continued its meteoric rise in the ratings with download speeds that beat T-Mobile's, but relatively slow uploads. And AT&T focuses on reliability, rather than speed.

The fastest Verizon speeds, with a series of download tests consistently over 100Mbps, came right on the corner of Temple Square downtown. Apparently that location has a very good wireless connection to powerful networks.

Salt Lake City - 4G

Salt Lake City - 3G

Salt Lake City - map

San Diego, CA

San Diego

San Diego, CA: T-Mobile

T-Mobile beat its competitors on nearly every measure in San Diego, with the fastest uploads, downloads, and among the best reliability at providing a broadband experience. The northern part of SD County was particularly good to T-Mobile: One of our fastest download speeds, an amazing 123Mbps, came in La Jolla, and we also saw excellent speeds in Torrey Pines.

Second-place finisher AT&T didn't have the kinds of spectacular peaks we saw with T-Mobile in San Diego, but rather gave a consistent, reliable, and strong broadband experience all across our test areas, with very low ping times. This fits with AT&T's current corporate strategy, which is to set up a reliable, low-latency network to enable the next generation of connected cars and smart city technologies. It's still a good choice for your smartphone, as well.

San Diego - 4G

San Diego - 3G

San Diego - map

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco

San Francisco, CA: Verizon

In the San Francisco Bay area, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint are all delivering the speeds that Silicon Valley demands. Overall, we saw some of the fastest peak speeds and lowest ping times in the whole country in San Francisco, showing that it actually matters when you're physically close to the servers that run your favorite Internet sites.

Verizon scored a clear win with the fastest upload and download speeds, delivering more than 100Mbps down in five locations near the center of San Francisco. Fisherman's Wharf, Chinatown, SOMA, and 11th and Folsom all got the super-high-speed treatment. I'm also pretty sure there's a Sprint tower in Huntington Park on Nob Hill, because that location poured 122Mbps into our Sprint test phone.

AT&T was the weakest overall, but all the major networks had slightly soft spots among our 13 test locations. Verizon hit one in western San Jose. T-Mobile hiccuped in the Financial District. Sprint wasn't so great in the Haight. AT&T was downright appalling in North Beach. That said, especially in the city itself, Verizon is the way to go in SF this year.

San Francisco - 4G

San Francisco - 3G

San Francisco - map

Seattle, WA

Seattle

Seattle, WA: Sprint

Sprint pulled out a surprising success in Seattle, T-Mobile's hometown, and it's sure to leave the local heroes fuming. In fact, T-Mobile is in third place in Seattle this year.

Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon all showed spectacular peak download speeds, well over 100Mbps, so it's clear that their latest, greatest technologies are all in full effect in Seattle. But Sprint's average download speeds blew everyone else away, and its upload speeds were much better than we saw in other cities. That made Sprint by far the superior choice.

Why is this happening? I suspect Sprint's network is very lightly loaded in Seattle, especially its new LTE Plus airwaves, which aren't usable on older, less expensive phones. So potentially here, we're looking at pretty heavily used (and still quite impressive) T-Mobile and Verizon networks, and a just-out-of-the-box new Sprint network with almost nobody on the lanes yet.

Verizon got most of the speediest, 100Mbps+ tests in Seattle, most notably by the Woodland Park Zoo. But as we saw with winners and losers elsewhere, Sprint won by offering consistently faster speeds across the city, while Verizon's speeds rose and dipped precipitously depending on which one of our 12 different test locations we were at. (Sprint's fastest test was at the Northgate Mall.)

Two years ago, Sprint was practically a laughingstock. Today it has 60 percent faster downloads than either T-Mobile or Verizon in Seattle (never mind AT&T). That's a massive turnaround.

Seattle - 4G

Seattle - 3G

Seattle - map

St. Louis, MO

St. Louis

St. Louis, MO: Verizon

The difference between Verizon's network and Sprint's really becomes clear when you look at our St. Louis numbers. Both are now using carrier aggregation to deliver positively epic peak speeds that could let you download a movie in a matter of minutes. But Sprint does that at the cost of upload speeds, while Verizon provides a more balanced network. That gained Verizon the win in St. Louis.

St. Louis is one of those cases where considerations other than our speed score should come into play when choosing a carrier, though. Sprint's speeds are fast and reliable, and more importantly, the carrier still offers unlimited data, which means you'll be able to take advantage of those high download speeds more frequently than you would with Verizon.

St. Louis - 4G

St., Louis - 3G

St. Louis - map

Tucson, AZ

Tucson

Tucson, AZ: Verizon

Verizon beat out T-Mobile in Tucson this year with faster download speeds and better reliability than the smaller carrier. Our fastest Tucson result, 116Mbps down, was on the aptly named Speedway, near Wilmot. Verizon triumphed by having no particularly slow spots, while T-Mobile struggled in our test up at the Tucson Mall.

Sprint is hurting hard in Tucson because it hasn't yet laid in its LTE Plus network, leaving its speeds down at the practically 3G levels we saw two years ago. It's not worth signing up for Sprint, Boost, or Virgin in Tucson right now, with the much faster T-Mobile-powered MetroPCS as an alternative.

Tucson - 3G

Tucson - map

Washington, DC

Washington D.C.

Washington, DC: Verizon

Symmetry made the difference for Verizon in Washington, DC. While AT&T and Sprint also delivered high download speeds, Verizon's superior upload speeds brought it to victory. Upload speeds count for 20 percent of our score, reflecting all of the Snapchat and other image- and video-based social media going around.

Sprint's low upload speeds are actually a conscious choice. Sprint decided to devote more of its spectrum to downloads than to uploads, reasoning that people become more impatient when their Web pages don't load than when their Snapchats don't immediately send.

Washington was a tough town for T-Mobile this year, even though the carrier has greatly improved its suburban coverage with its 700MHz Extended Range LTE. The pairing of slightly slower download speeds and nearly perfect reliability suggests congestion is the cause: T-Mobile is just a victim of its own recent success. As this is affecting download but not upload speeds, T-Mobile users streaming video and music may be the cause.

Washington D.C - 4G

Washington D.C. - 3G

Washington - map

Suburban/Rural Northeast

Suburban/Rural Northeast: Verizon

Our Northeast drive took a different router than past years. We covered both the I-95 and I-84 corridors between New York and Boston, as well as I-80 across most of Pennsylvania; a good chunk of the NJ/PA border; Lancaster and York, PA; and Westminster, MD. We drove around both the highly populated suburbs of New York and Boston, but also much more rural areas of Pennsylvania and Maryland.

That's why Verizon triumphed. Especially on the long drive through the Pennsylvania mountains, nobody beats Verizon's network reliability. AT&T came in second place for similar reasons, while T-Mobile got socked hard by weak areas in rural Pennsylvania and Maryland, and Sprint's new LTE Plus doesn't reach far outside the major cities.

If you live in a city or a relatively nearby suburb in the Northeast, you have several good carrier choices. But if you're heading out into the sticks, Verizon is clearly the fastest mobile network in the rural Northeast.

Northeast - 4G

Northeast - 3G

Suburban/Rural Southeast

Suburban/Rural Southeast: AT&T

The South is AT&T's heartland, and it shows as AT&T coverage and reliability ruled both our Southeast and South Central drives. In the Southeast, we drove from Nashville down to Atlanta, through Alabama to New Orleans, and also from Washington, DC through Charlottesville to Raleigh and Charlotte.

No carrier offered perfect coverage on these drives. AT&T, for instance, got pretty spotty in the rural parts of south central Virginia. But in both our drives and a visit I made recently to eastern North Carolina, we found AT&T to be the best choice in the Southeast outside the major cities.

AT&T has been building a workhorse, reliability-focused network in the past few years, and our Southeast drive results show that focus. While T-Mobile and Verizon both had higher peak speeds, AT&T more consistently delivered downloads above our 5Mbps minimum threshold, and gave us the quickest pings against a range of nearby, neutral servers. That positions AT&T well to power the upcoming smart cities of the Southeast.

Southeast - 4G

Southeast - 3G

Suburban/Rural North Central

Suburban/Rural North Central: Verizon

Verizon's dominance of the North Central region extended to our drive through suburban and rural areas. Coming up from Oklahoma City, we drove past Wichita and up to Kansas City and St. Louis before heading down to Paducah. We also drove from Columbus, OH to Indianapolis, Chicago, and Detroit, and went past Toledo and Cleveland.

On those long drives, Verizon's speed outweighed AT&T's better reliability. Verizon scored the best average upload and download speeds in the more populated areas of our drive, while AT&T had more consistently reliable if slower speeds. Sprint's strong performance this year surprised us, with spectacular download speeds, but both Sprint and T-Mobile still haven't filled in some of the rural gaps that Verizon and AT&T cover.

One of our readers asked me specifically about speeds in Mechanicsburg and Springfield, OH. A quick analysis shows that AT&T is the best overall carrier in those towns, with 23Mbps average download speeds, much faster than the competitors. That was only a small part of our North Central drive, though, and Verizon did much better elsewhere.

North Central - 4G

North Central - 3G

Suburban/Rural South Central

Suburban/Rural South Central: AT&T

Our South Central region this year took in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma. That's traditionally been AT&T territory, since AT&T inherited Texas-based SBC, and AT&T still provides the best service all around when you get out of Texas and Oklahoma's major cities. In much of the rest of the country, we saw AT&T isn't focusing on speed, but on this drive, it outpaced the competition on every measure, whether it be speed, reliability, or consistency.

South Central - 4G

South Central - 3G

Suburban/Rural Northwest

Suburban/Rural Northwest: Verizon

We took a new route through the Mountain West this year, one that really showed off Verizon's hard work building out LTE in rural areas. After driving up the coast from San Francisco to Portland, we took I-5 to Seattle, then headed west to Spokane, past Lewiston, through some national forests to Boise, and then over to Salt Lake City and down I-15 through the middle of Utah.

If you're looking for 4G LTE, especially in eastern Washington, Idaho, and Utah, Verizon is the primary choice. We saw major gaps and blackouts on all three of the other networksbasically, far northern California, central Idaho, and northern Utah can be brutal on network coverage. But Verizon? It just kept on plugging.

Northwest - 4G

Northwest - 3G

Suburban/Rural Southwest

Suburban/Rural Southwest: Verizon

We followed the same route through the Southwest as we did the past few years: Las Vegas down to Phoenix, Tucson, then San Diego, and up to Los Angeles. As we saw in our other rural regions, the leader here really differentiated itself by reliability. That's Verizon for you.

That doesn't mean Verizon was slow. On the contrary, it had faster average download speeds than any of its competitors. But it does mean that if you're stuck on a long, dark road outside Yuma, or in the forest east of San Diego (where various other carriers had trouble), Verizon has your back. Combine that with Verizon's wins in Tucson, San Diego, and LA, and you'll find Verizon is the preferred carrier on this side of the border.

Southwest - 4G

Southwest - 3G

Further Reading