T-Mobile Speeds in Chicago
LTE is still king until 5G infrastructure improves
Every network says they have the best speed even if they know it’s not true. For a long time T-Mobile had a reputation of poor network quality but those days are over.
After using the network extensively for the last few months I’m happy to report my positive experience.
My Experiment
To test the T-Mobile network, I conducted speed tests on the Ookla app, using both 5G and 4G LTE.
The Rules:
- I tested 2–3 times daily
- Testing locations included home, work, on the train, in the car, and various stores/restaurants
- I tested in the greater Chicago area and rural areas of Illinois
- In each location I tested 1–2x with 5G and LTE
- I tested at various times throughout the day
- If there was no signal, or I was unable to connect for the test, speed was documented as 0 mbps
My Findings
I completed a total of 90 speed tests- 45 for 5G and 4G LTE respectively. Many of the tests were at home and work, but I also tested in the car, on the train, while shopping, and in rural areas.
Occasionally, 5G speeds were off the charts (150+ mbps), but this only happened in 13% of my tests. The majority of 5G tests are clustered between 0 and 70mbps.
One 5G test clocked in at at 320 mbps. The potential for exceptional speed is there, it just doesn’t happen very often.
You can also see that in 4 of my tests, there was no 5G coverage available. These were recorded as 0 mbps on the chart.
LTE testing was more reliable. It can’t match the high-end speed of 5G, but it’s a steady workhorse. In all of my testing, I never had an instance where I could not get an LTE signal. 75% of my tests were between 10 and 40 mbps.
To really show the sporadic nature, this graph shows the results of my tests in sequential order:
This view shows 5G and 4G LTE speeds go up/down at the same time. This happened consistently with very few exceptions. What I really notice when looking at this graph is just how random the network speed can be.
For the averge user, this means that if speeds are slow on 5G, they will likely be slow on 4G LTE as well. However, when 5G speeds went down to 0 mbps, I was at least able to get some speed readings from LTE.
By the numbers:
5G average speed is about 150% higher than LTE, but this is due to a few outliers that skew the data. Median data speeds are much closer, which fit the user experience of 5G. It’s not that much faster than LTE most of the time, but every once in a while the speeds are incredible.
The same story applies to upload speeds. Apart from regular photo backups and dropping articles to Medium, I don’t do much uploading. Maybe those who upload video/audio content would notice a bigger difference between 5G and 4G LTE.
Upload speeds were consistently slower than download speeds, but this is normal. Since the majority of users spend their time consuming/downloading rather than sharing/uploading, networks are designed to deliver faster upload speeds.
Takeaways:
As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I typically don’t turn on 5G on my iPhone. These results show why: it isn’t totally reliable.
Though T-Mobile’s map shows consistent 5G coverage across Chicago, I did not find that to be the case. Sometimes tests could not be done on 5G due to no coverage.
5G is great when it works, but if you try to download a movie, chances are you won’t have lightning fast speeds when you need it. For now, I’m sticking with LTE.
