Which Cell Service Is Best For My Area

If you need a renewed dose of optimism about the world, consult the coverage maps of the large three wireless carriers. But if yous'd like a more honest assessment of whether AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless – or none of the above – will offer decent connectivity near a future home or travel destination, yous should get an outside stance.

Ideally, that would come from a friend with all-encompassing knowledge of the area and of how to benchmark a wireless carrier'southward performance using apps such as Ookla'due south Speedtest. The test-bulldoze pick T-Mobile launched 2 years ago can let you test coverage firsthand, if you're already in the area.

But after that, your adjacent all-time data volition come from coverage maps built on independent assessments of the carriers' coverage.

For years, the bulldoze testing provided by RootMetrics, a subsidiary of the market-research business firm IHS Markit, has provided one such source of ground truth. Visit its coverage map, search for a location past address, city and state or ZIP code, and you lot can see its color-coded ratings of the fastest speeds (from "dull" to "super fast") and best applied science (from 2G or 5G) for each carrier in an area.

Want fast data speeds in and around Charlotte's trendy NODA neighborhood? AT&T customers may be frustrated with their service, based on this coverage map from RootMetrics.

The drive-testing approach RootMetrics employs means yous won't get much useful information for spaces betwixt roads. For that, the crowdsourced testing done by the mobile-analytics firm Opensignal may yield more useful data -- but you'll take to install its mobile apps to encounter these maps.

In the app, tap the pushpin icon to encounter coverage near y'all, or then tap the search icon to look information technology up elsewhere. Unfortunately, Opensignal stops displaying useful network-performance stats once you zoom in likewise closely. And because Opensignal relies on reports collected from phones running these apps, information technology gets less useful in more rural areas where fewer people will accept installed its apps.

In early August, the Federal Communications Commission added its own coverage resource: a map of LTE coverage based on applying models of wireless-signal propagation to its own database of prison cell tower sites. You can set the map to display calculated data or voice performance from any of the big three (plus the regional carrier U.S. Cellular) or show only i company'south coverage.

The take hold of here is that the FCC's cellular cartography won't tell you who has the fastest 5G or even which carrier volition best adjust some rampage-watch streaming – it only plots out "where customers tin expect to receive 4G LTE broadband service at a minimum user download speed of v megabits per second (5 Mbps) and a user upload speed of one megabit per second (1 Mbps)."

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Olmsted Island, a picturesque spot in the Potomac River near Great Falls National Park. is a cellphone dead zone.

But while you might not want to alive with that sort of speed, it should suffice for navigation, communication and fifty-fifty a little photo sharing. More important, the FCC'south estimates accept already struck outside analysts as beingness more honest than the carriers' own maps, and my ain checks of such partial dead zones as Olmsted Island, upwardly the Potomac River from Washington by Great Falls, these estimates match my own experiences meliorate than what the carrier maps suggest.

They also represent a striking contrast from the woefully inaccurate data on wired broadband availability that the FCC has been publishing for years based on vague and unreliable data sent in by providers – and which accept more than than once led people seriously astray most prospects for broadband at a new residence.