The US ranks 55th in terms of LTE download speeds

[sylarspock]

The US ranks 55th in terms of LTE download speeds

 

Report from OpenSignal compares country's LTE speeds and coverage

 

Spoiler

The quality of a country's mobile network is often decided by a recipe that's two parts economics, and one part geography. While small, developed nations like South Korea and Hong Kong can easily provide complete coverage and fast speeds to their dense populations, larger, poorer countries often struggle to deliver full bars to all of their territory. Countries that are big and rich, like America, tend to get networks that are somewhere in the middle — good on coverage, for example, but not so great on speed, as a report into LTE in the US by OpenSignal showed earlier this week. Now, the network-testing company has released its worldwide report for Q4 2015, allowing us to see how America stacks up with the rest of the globe.

THE US HAS FALLEN BEHIND THE REST OF THE WORLD ON LTE SPEEDS

Unfortunately, not much has changed since we last checked in with global LTE speeds. The US is still slipping behind the rest of the world when it comes to download speeds, with an average of 10 Mbps — ranking it 55th worldwide. It does much better when it comes to coverage (subscribers get an LTE signal 81 percent of the time — seventh best in the world), but it's still suffering from the first mover disadvantage. Like Japan and Sweden, the US got its LTE network early, but the technology is now old, and there are plenty of subscribers using it — meaning slower speeds for all. For context, the global average for download speeds on LTE is 13.5 Mbps, while Singapore offers the fastest networks, with downloads as quick as 40 Mbps. And in Q2 2015, America's average download speed was 9 Mbps.

Meanwhile, newer networks with up-to-date tech and fewer subscribers deliver faster speeds. OpenSignal notes that countries in South America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East tend to demonstrate this trend (although their coverage might not be so good). Romania, for example, offers only 61 percent coverage for its LTE network, but has speeds as fast as 33 Mbps, ranking it sixth in the global leaderboard. But although the trend globally is for rising speeds (they're up nearly a whole megabit compared to last year), countries with established networks are finding it harder to improve with limited spectrum available to them. Looks like we might have to wait for 5G to get going before we get real next-generation mobile data.

Here's a global leaderboard for LTE speeds, and for more detailed data check out OpenSignal's full report.

3

 

 

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10905740/global-lte-speeds-coverage-opensignal
Open Signal Report: http://opensignal.com/reports/2016/02/state-of-lte-q4-2015/

[ZetZet]

kewl

[TidaLWaveZ]

And the state that I live in ranks 49th in the happiest states in the U.S.

[TomvanWijnen]

3G ftw

[Starelementpoke]

I can´t even use 3g... Mainly because my dad´s too cheap to get it...

[MoonSpot]

From source:

https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/02/state-of-lte-q4-2015/

 

Fastest Networks With LTE:

SaskTel (Canada) 35 Mbps

 

Super did not expect to see anything Canada on the list, and since it's SaskTel maybe I still haven't :p.  Still not enough to get me to move to Saskatchewan, but getting closer.

 

Then again it's probably only that fast because there are only 4 people on it throughout the day.  And if we look at the others listed for Canada saskTel is an obvious oddball in the cluster.

[NateGSR117]

The USA has fallen behind in a lot of things and it just sad

[TechGod]

I was pretty sure that NZ had the fastest LTE speeds in the world...

[TechGod]

Here is the link. 

http://i.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/72546604/NZ-has-the-fastest-4G-speeds-in-the-world

[Yoinkerman]

12 hours ago, MoonSpot said:

From source:

https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/02/state-of-lte-q4-2015/

 

Fastest Networks With LTE:

SaskTel (Canada) 35 Mbps

 

Super did not expect to see anything Canada on the list, and since it's SaskTel maybe I still haven't :p.  Still not enough to get me to move to Saskatchewan, but getting closer.

 

Then again it's probably only that fast because there are only 4 people on it throughout the day.  And if we look at the others listed for Canada saskTel is an obvious oddball in the cluster.

Where I live in northern BC, Canada, the LTE is like 30/15, it was better than my home connection for a long time

[Belgarathian]

New Zealand is second.... 

[TechGod]

55 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

New Zealand is second.... 

I swear it was first though. We beat out the Aussies. 

[Str_Mape]

1 hour ago, Belgarathian said:

New Zealand is second.... 

This brings me a lot of happiness  

[Lethal Seraph]

9 hours ago, NateGSR117 said:

The USA has fallen behind in a lot of things and it just sad

That has been the trend since the mid 2000's. The 1% is robbing us, and the politicians (being bought and all) are also helping them.

[DominicNikon]

in the us my 4g speed is 60mh/s down 

[AresKrieger]

Yeah I don't use smart phones or really care about mobile internet, it would only allow me to waste necessary work time, wait canada is better, how is this measured since they have a lot of deadzones just as the US does (more so actually) is it just available 4G speeds or something.

[connorpiper]

I get ~45Mb/s at my house with T-Mobile. 

Got 10Mb/s with Verizon when I had it. 

 

Also, the USA is quite large. 

[ionbasa]

So, I'm beginning to question how accurate all this data is. Rootmetrics claims Verizon wins hands down, Opensignal claims T Mobile, and PCMag claims Verizon. There's a ton of conflicting information on speeds as well. As you can see, my speeds outdo the number 1 country on that list.

 

Here's my own speedtest:

 

I haven't looked into it too much but I assume all those reports are using mean instead of median. Also, I cant find any actual statistics, such as standard deviation, trials ran, etc. If we had all that info, we could actually do some tests and see if these results are presented poorly. My gut feeling tells me that the statistical difference in actual tested speeds dont varry by that much.

Would love to see some t-test, distribution plots,p-values, etc.

 

Edited February 6, 2016 by ionbasa

[corsairian]

Im usually fine with lte on sprint. But if im driving the service is terrible. Sometimes im not even able to watch a video in 1080, let alone 1440p. I really wish this wasnt a problem though...

[Bouzoo]

Interesting, my country is not there, and in their test we were there with 16. I'm getting frequent 25+ in different location in the country so yeah... not even on the list.

[TheGamingBarrel]

Jesus christ, I get 8 times the average of the US.

[mstef]

18 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

I'm getting frequent 25+ in different location in the country

Maybe 85+% of territory of my country is covered with DC-HSDPA and I'm getting 30++ in cities and around 25Mbps outside them with 3G- who needs 4G?  

 

[sof006]

Sometimes I reckon most networks cannot even class 4G as 4G as its so slow it may as well be 3G/2G.

 

There is some days i've been sat trying to open a website and nothing happens.

[King_Tuna]

Sadly still rollin hsdpa+ (3g)

[r1Ns3]

Hello, here from down under with my speed of 0.5 upload speed and 2 download speed.

 

 

And this is from a 70 dollar per month plan

 

 

Halleh luiya