AT&T, Verizon Continue to Gain 5G Ground With C-band Rollouts, Opensignal Finds

Less than 10 months after AT&T and Verizon began lighting up C-band 5G, those speedy mid-band frequencies are now seriously brightening broadband performance at those two carriers. New data from the network-measurement firm Opensignal finds dramatic jumps in 5G download speeds at each. 

This Wednesday report(Opens in a new window) tracked the biggest increase at AT&T, where the average 5G download stood at 50Mbps in March but had leapt by 34.6% to 67.3Mbps in September. At Verizon, the average 5G download climbed 15.8% over the same period, from 70.3Mbps to 81.4Mbps.

Opensignal’s testing, which relies on network-benchmarking software “within our own and partner apps(Opens in a new window),” also found that far more AT&T and Verizon users are spending time on C-band. At the former carrier, C-band only showed up in 4.6% of readings in March but hit 30.1% in September; at the latter, C-band’s share rose from 16.2% to 49.3% in that time.

Low-band 5G, which uses the same frequencies as LTE and often runs no faster, made up almost all of the balance at each carrier. Opensignal’s report does not break out how often ultra-fast, seriously short-range millimeter-wave 5G showed up in its readings, but its past research found it occupying an infinitesimal share of time spent connected–0.3% at AT&T and 0.5% at Verizon in an October 2021 report(Opens in a new window). 

Both carriers combined to spend almost $69 billion in 2021 on C-band 5G spectrum, but Verizon staged the bigger start by deploying it in 46 markets, versus just eight cites for AT&T. AT&T had suggested that it would not expand on that significantly until 2023, but company executives said on its Q2 earnings call that they were moving up that expansion–and Opensignal’s data seems to confirm that as well as Verizon’s own expansions of C-band.

It also shows that AT&T and Verizon continue to trail behind T-Mobile, which began deploying midband 5G  in the spring of 2020, using the 2.5GHz frequencies it picked up with its purchase of Sprint. Opensignal’s new report cites a 71.5% midband share of T-Mobile 5G readings; it does not report new T-Mobile 5G download speeds, but its July “5G Experience Report”(Opens in a new window) found an average of 171Mbps for that carrier.