The Q2 2020 Speedtest® United States Market Report by Ookla® is based on Speedtest Intelligence® data from over 1.6 million unique mobile user devices and 18.9 million fixed broadband devices performing more than 85.1 million consumer-initiated tests on Speedtest apps in the U.S. during the period.

Data from Speedtest Intelligence reveals median download speed over mobile in the U.S. increased 15.8% between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020 to 29.00 Mbps. The median upload speed for mobile was 5.74 Mbps, down 15.2% from Q2 2019.

Median download speed over fixed broadband increased 19.6% during the last year to 86.04 Mbps in Q2 2020, and median upload speed increased 1.5% to 11.86 Mbps in Q2 2020.

We saw a decline in mobile and fixed broadband download speeds in early March as consumer behavior shifted in response to the pandemic. Speeds have since rebounded on both mobile and fixed broadband. Read our week-by-week view of COVID-19’s impact on internet performance.

AT&T is fastest and most consistent

With a Speed Score^™ of 41.23, AT&T was the fastest operator in competitive geographies in the U.S. during Q2 2020. AT&T also had the highest Consistency Score^™ with 79.7% of Speedtest® results meeting or exceeding speed thresholds of 5 Mbps for download and 1 Mbps for upload.

To learn more about how operators performed for 4G Availability and latency, read the full report.

Mobile operators doubled down on 5G

All major U.S. operators were focused on implementing 5G over the past year.
AT&T continued to roll out its millimeter wave “5G+” network in parts of major cities. In addition, AT&T repurposed its 850 MHz low-band spectrum, previously used for 3G service, in parts of 30 states to offer improved 5G coverage.

Verizon launched new 5G markets and expanded its millimeter wave “Ultra Wideband” 5G footprint in parts of 35 cities. Verizon recently completed Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) field trials, and is expected to start leveraging its sub-6GHz spectrum for 5G by the end of the year.

In June 2019, T-Mobile launched their millimeter wave 5G in parts of six markets, followed by the nationwide rollout of 5G in the 600 MHz band to cover more than 200 million users. With the successful completion of the Sprint merger, T-Mobile accelerated the rollout of 5G in the 2.5 GHz band, which became commercially available in Philadelphia and New York City.

For specific information about how flagship phones performed and how speeds compare by manufacturer, read the full report.

Verizon has the fastest fixed broadband

With a Speed Score of 117.14, Verizon had the fastest fixed broadband in the U.S. during Q2 2020. Verizon also had the lowest median latency at 9 ms. Spectrum provided the most consistent internet experience with a Consistency Score of 84.4%.

D.C. fastest for mobile, New Jersey for fixed

Analyzing performance at the state level, the District of Columbia showed the fastest median download speed on mobile during Q2 2020, while New Jersey showed the fastest median download speed over fixed broadband during the same period.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was the fastest city in the U.S. for mobile during Q2 2020 while Kansas City, Missouri was the fastest city for fixed broadband.

Read our full report for full rankings in all fifty states and the 100 most populous cities in the country. We also include data on providers’ performance in states and major cities.

At Ookla® we believe speeds are a foundational measure of customer experience. But what happens when a customer is getting great speeds and still isn’t happy with their provider? Would that provider even know? This is why we ask Speedtest® users to rate their provider on a five-star scale at the end of a test. The resulting data forms the core of Consumer Sentiment^TM, a new dashboard in Speedtest Intelligence®. With Consumer Sentiment, we can gauge customer satisfaction and pair that information with performance data to get a full picture of customer experience.

We analyzed Consumer Sentiment data on ratings from the United States in Q4 2019 to gauge some of the nuances of customer satisfaction.

Overall customer satisfaction varies widely by location and operator

Ookla’s five-star rating system gauges a customer’s overall satisfaction with a provider’s service and brand. Comparing ratings data across the home states of the top four mobile operators in the U.S., we saw that customers’ perception of their operators varies between the states.

Speedtest Intelligence shows T-Mobile consistently had among the best ratings with their highest average rating (3.7) in Kansas and their lowest (3.5) in both Texas and Washington. Average customer ratings for AT&T ranged between a low of 2.9 in their home state of Texas to a high of 3.5 in Washington State. Sprint’s highest average rating (3.8) was in their home state of Kansas, while their lowest rating (2.7) was in Texas. Verizon’s highest rating (3.4) was in Kansas and New York, while their lowest (2.9) was in Washington.

Kansas showed the highest ratings for almost all operators, with the exception of AT&T which was 0.1 higher in Washington than in Kansas. Texas showed the lowest. This Consumer Sentiment data from Speedtest Intelligence forms a jumping off point for providers to investigate what else might be going on in those locations, whether it’s infrastructure that needs improvement or a perception challenge.

Performance data plus Consumer Sentiment tells a broader story

We paired Speedtest Intelligence data on mean download speed in each of the states considered with Consumer Sentiment ratings to see how speed might affect customer satisfaction.

We found that having the fastest mean download speed in a location does not necessarily indicate that an operator will have the highest Consumer Sentiment ratings. In two states, Kansas and Washington, the operator with the fastest speed also had (or tied for) the highest rating. In New York, however, Verizon had the fastest speed, while T-Mobile had the highest rating. In Texas, Sprint had the fastest speed and the lowest rating.

Analyzing performance at different ratings tiers

To better understand the relationship between network performance and customer satisfaction, we broke out performance results by star ratings. Looking more deeply at mean performance data at each ratings tier, we can see that consumers with higher speeds and lower latency generally gave higher ratings.

Location alone does not account for satisfaction

Based on the “happy Kansas, unhappy Texas” data above, it might be easy to assume that satisfaction is regional. However, such an assumption could cause a provider to overlook important nuances of customer contentment. For example, an examination of Consumer Sentiment ratings data from the five boroughs of New York City reveals that satisfaction varied among the boroughs and between ratings by mobile and fixed customers.

A fixed broadband provider might think Manhattan was the unhappiest borough of all, when in fact they had the highest Consumer Sentiment ratings among mobile customers. The story in Queens was the opposite, with that borough showing the highest overall satisfaction for fixed broadband we saw in all of New York City. Meanwhile, their overall satisfaction on mobile was among the lowest reported.

As we saw above with the state data, the locations with the fastest speeds were not necessarily the locations with the highest Consumer Sentiment ratings.

There is much more to explore here, and Consumer Sentiment in Speedtest Intelligence gives providers a new layer of data to understand how consumers’ real-life experience impacts their satisfaction. Consumer Sentiment can be tracked over time and benchmarked against competitors, without the overhead of custom market research. Curious how satisfied your customers are with their overall network performance? Request a demo of the new Consumer Sentiment dashboard in Speedtest Intelligence.

More than 65,000 people watched the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers live at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami yesterday. All those fans on their phones sharing the halftime experience with folks back home used massive amounts of data as they livestreamed and posted to social media. Every year this event presents a major challenge to mobile operators who this year added 5G to the mix. We’re here to report on which operator had the fastest speeds and the lowest latency on game day and what indoor coverage looked like in the Miami area.

Mobile operators had their game face on

This is no ordinary sporting event, and operators have been working for many months on their playbooks for providing the best possible performance at Hard Rock Stadium. Highlights include:

• Inside the stadium, AT&T has upgraded their distributed antenna system (DAS) to support 5G and band 14 spectrum to increase LTE capacity by 300% and support first responders. They’ve also deployed 6 cell on wheels (COWs) and upgraded or added DAS at 29 locations around Miami.
• T-Mobile more than doubled 4G LTE capacity at Hard Rock Stadium and deployed mmWave-based 5G in select locations at the stadium and around the city. This builds on the 600 MHz 5G launched across the city in December.
• Sprint is using a “split mode” for LTE and 5G in Hard Rock Stadium with an 1,800+ antenna DAS to handle LTE while 5G will be transmitted over Massive MIMO. Sprint also used Massive MIMO to add 5G in select locations around the city to the infrastructure improvements they’ve been working on in Miami.
• Verizon installed 5G nodes at event venues, added capacity to 280+ existing cell sites and enhanced performance across Miami with nearly 30 in-building solutions. These improvements came on top of investments Verizon has made in and around the stadium in the past two years.

Verizon Wireless’s download speeds beat out competitors’

We compared the big four U.S. mobile operators from two hours prior to kick-off to 30 minutes after the game ended to see who won. Here’s what we saw:

Overall Cellular Performance at Hard Rock Stadium

Speedtest^® Data | February 2, 2020

Sprint’s home team might have won the game, but Verizon triumphed when it came to mobile download speeds, coming in 143.7% faster than second-place T-Mobile when considering Speedtest® results over all technologies. Sprint had the third fastest mean download speed in this category and AT&T came in fourth.

Focusing on their 5G game really helped Verizon take the day when considering overall speeds as T-Mobile had the fastest mean download speed (66.35 Mbps) on LTE. Sprint was second on LTE with a mean download speed of 56.16 Mbps, AT&T third at 39.18 Mbps and Verizon fourth at 30.67 Mbps. We break out 5G speeds for each operator below.

T-Mobile’s mean upload speed over all technologies was far better than competitors’. Upload speed is especially important at big events like this as fans try to share their game day experience with those not in the stadium.

T-Mobile also had the lowest latency, coming in 26.0% faster than second-place AT&T. Sprint was third for latency and Verizon fourth.

For comparison, the mean download speed over mobile in the U.S. in January 2020 was 41.23 Mbps, upload was 10.55 Mbps and latency was 46 ms.

5G for the win

5G is the biggest story in mobile these days, and all four operators came prepared to deliver their best game to customers with 5G-capable phones and compete for bragging rights during this high profile event.

5G Performance at Hard Rock Stadium

Speedtest^® Data | February 2, 2020

Verizon easily beat T-Mobile and Sprint when it came to mean download speed over 5G during the big game. Verizon came in last, however, for both mean upload speed over 5G and latency. T-Mobile showed the fastest mean upload speed over 5G and Sprint had the best latency on 5G. While we did see 5G Speedtest results for AT&T during the game, there were fewer than 10, the minimum threshold we set for this event.

Hard Rock Stadium Wi-Fi was a viable option

In 2019, fans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta used over 24 TB of data on the stadium Wi-Fi network on game day with an average Wi-Fi download speed of 30.98 Mbps. To get a baseline on the Miami experience, we looked at Wi-Fi performance during the Bengals v. Dolphins matchup on December 22, 2019.

Wi-Fi Performance at Hard Rock Stadium

Speedtest^® Data | February 2, 2020

Wi-Fi at the stadium did show some game day stresses yesterday, with a mean download speed 33.7% slower than the December 22 game. Mean upload speed dropped 25.7% and latency was up 28.6%.

Verizon also provided Wi-Fi for their customers during the big game yesterday, and the mean download speed was comparable to that on the stadium’s SSID. Mean upload speed on Verizon’s SSID was 12.1% slower than on the stadium’s, but Verizon’s Wi-Fi latency was also lower, showing a 22.2% improvement over stadium Wi-Fi.

It’s worth noting that mean upload speed in all cases was faster than that on download. This is impressive and helpful to fans trying to livestream their experience for friends back home.

Indoor mobile coverage in Miami

Stadium speed is very important, however most attendees will spend the bulk of their time in hotels and at tourist attractions in and around Miami. We used Cell Analytics^™ to assess indoor coverage at 9,128 buildings in the Miami metro area during Q3-Q4 2019 to see who had good indoor coverage (signal strength of greater than -115 dBm) in the most buildings.

Indoor Mobile Coverage in Miami Metro Area

Cell Analytics^TM Data | Q3-Q4 2019

Verizon showed good coverage in more buildings than any other operator at 97.7%, followed by T-Mobile at 97.2%, AT&T at 94.2% and Sprint at 92.5%.

We also examined who had the best coverage in each building and found that T-Mobile provided the strongest coverage in 36.9% of buildings analyzed. Verizon had the strongest coverage in 29.1% of buildings analyzed, AT&T was strongest in 22.7%, and finally Sprint was strongest in 11.2%.

Learn how Ookla® can help you determine if your network is prepared for the massive crowds that accompany a marquee event and analyze how your network performs both indoors and out, down to the building level.

The NFL playoffs are an inopportune time for a fantasy sports and betting site like FanDuel to be down, but a period of increased usage is exactly what can take a website out of commission. Downdetector® reports that FanDuel crashed on January 4, 2020 and January 5, 2020, just when football fans were reaching near peak excitement for the season. We have data on when FanDuel went down, how severe those outages were and where frustrated users were located.

How the outages played out

FanDuel Outages During Playoffs per Downdetector^®

January 4-5, 2020

January 4 (outages 1 and 2)

The Texans had barely started playing the Bills on Saturday, January 4 when reports of FanDuel being down started rolling in, primarily from Chicago, Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. This outage was relatively short, but then so was the reprieve.

New outage reports spiked right about kickoff time for the Titans v. Patriots. This outage was both more severe, showing 5 times as many reports, and lasted longer. Sports fans in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis provided the highest number of outage reports.

Pennsylvania and Indiana are two states where FanDuel users can legally bet online.

January 5

On Sunday, January 5, it was the Seahawks v. Eagles that gave FanDuel the most trouble with an outage that started right before kickoff and petered along for about 7 hours. The highest concentration of reports came from Pennsylvania, home territory of the Eagles.

Will FanDuel be ready for The Big Game?

Outages are not isolated incidents, and previous outages on November 28 and December 29 could have been warning signals for FanDuel site managers. We hope these issues don’t pop up again when fans around the world tune into the Big Game on February 2, but we can’t say for certain.

If you’re concerned about outages on your site, Downdetector can help. Downdetector helps reduce downtime by providing data on regions and services affected that can point to a root cause. Learn more about how Downdetector can help you.