AUSTIN: AT&T
AT&T’s 4G LTE network is the fastest in Austin. AT&T had faster downloads,
faster uploads, and was more reliable than other carriers on our metro-area
drive that took us from the airport to Anderson Mill.
We saw AT&T’s 5G network primarily in northwest Austin rather than
downtown, and its peak speeds were actually lower than those of 4G, although it
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speed situation comes from how current phones handle low-band 5G. AT&T
currently uses a very narrow lane of low-band 5G that can’t be combined with
low-band 4G or with as many lanes of 4G overall as phones in 4G-only mode
can. So a phone in 4G-only mode often gets access to wider bandwidths than a
phone on AT&T 5G.
Verizon doesn’t have any 5G in Austin, but its 4G came in at a reliable second
place. T-Mobile has the most 5G availability, but as its 5G results were 17
percent slower than its 4G results at locations where both networks were
available, we wouldn’t rush out to get a T-Mobile 5G phone in Austin.
BALTIMORE: VERIZON WIRELESS
A little bit of 5G went a long way for Verizon in Baltimore, pushing it above
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Baltimore—yet we saw Verizon 5G in Canton, Midtown, on Reisterstown Road,
and on Loch Raven Boulevard, showing speeds up to 602Mbps. The
combination of 4G and 5G makes a high-end Verizon phone your best bet
in Baltimore.
Photo^ credit:^ f^11 photo/shutterstock.com