Verizon's big launch of C-Band 5G in 46 areas nationwide spiked its 5G speeds by 50%, according to new crowdsourced data from Ookla Speedtest.
Even though AT&T and T-Mobile also launched new technologies this month—AT&T with C-Band 5G in eight cities and T-Mobile with 5G carrier aggregation—both carriers only saw speed increases of around 1% between the weeks starting Jan. 12 and Jan.19, Ookla says.
AT&T's rollout is extremely limited; when we drove around Chicago, we only found one active AT&T C-Band site. Verizon, on the other hand, has a coverage map out showing much more widespread coverage.
Ookla warns that there may be a bias in these results, as a disproportionate number of people who saw the "UW" icon on their phones for the first time hit that Speedtest button to see what they were getting. Nevertheless, the results are encouraging for Verizon customers.
Ookla's overall numbers don't separate Verizon's "nationwide" 5G, which has performance almost exactly like 4G, from its C-Band and its even faster mmWave 5G. A C-Band-only number would likely be higher, but Verizon's speeds are being dragged down by that "nationwide" technology. In our own testing, we saw very different speeds at different Verizon C-Band cell sites, from an average of 109Mbps down at one site to an average of 534Mbps down at another.
Verizon's spike shows that later this year, 5G in the US may become much more competitive. Since last year, T-Mobile has had a huge advantage over both its competitors because of the carrier's rollout of its 2.5GHz mid-band 5G, which made it our Fastest Mobile Network for 2021.
Ookla's latest chart shows that Verizon still has a ways to go before matching T-Mobile nationwide. While Verizon's 5G showed a median download speed of 116.29Mbps for the week of Jan. 19, T-Mobile is up at 187.11Mbps with its much more nature rollout.
We tested Verizon's, AT&T's and T-Mobile's new technologies last week. They'll all play major roles in our Fastest Mobile Networks testing this May and June.
Disclosure: Ookla is owned by PCMag parent company, Ziff Davis.