By Catherine Sbeglia Nin
According to a new Opensignal report, recent C-band deployments by AT&T and Verizon are helping the pair catch up to T-Mobile US, which has, on several occasions, emerged as the 5G frontrunner when it comes to speed, availability and reach.
The latest report, however, shows that 5G download speeds on both AT&T and Verizon networks have increased, which Opensignal said is the direct result of C-band deployment, because more users on both carriers’ networks are spending time on that band. Specifically, download speeds on AT&T’s network have increased by 34.6 per cent, and the share of its customers using C-band has increased from 4.6 per cent to over 30 per cent. Verizon users’ experienced an average 5G download speed increase of 15.8 per cent, with the share of C-band readings growing from 16.2 per cent to nearly 50 per cent.
“Previously Opensignal analyzed the initial impact of 5G deployments in the C-band at a time when Verizon was deploying C-band services but AT&T’s early roll-outs were limited to eight metro areas around the US at first as AT&T planned a surge in Q2 when it would also deploy service on the 3.45 GHz band at the same time,” wrote senior industry analyst at Opensignal, Robert Wyrzykowski. “Our AT&T users’ average 5G download speeds have steadily increased since the beginning of the year when the operator started to roll out 5G services in the C-band.”
In March, AT&T was relying heavily on the 850 MHz (n5) band to deliver 5G services, and so it’s no surprise that Opensignal reported that it made up 92.7 per cent of its 5G readings on the network with use of the 3.7 GHz band being incredibly limited. However, in April, use of AT&T’s total sub 6GHz 5G readings rose to 5.9 per cent, and then accelerated to nearly 10 per cent in May and almost 20 per cent just two months later in July.
“This trend continued in September when more than 30 per cent of 5G readings observed on AT&T’s network were on the 3.7 GHz band — while the share of the 850 MHz dropped to 65.5 per cent of 5G readings,” continued Wyrzykowski.
