Tag Archives: Ookla

Ookla Looks at FWA Broadband

Ookla recently published an article that looked at speed test and coverage characteristics of FWA cellular broadband provided by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. FWA is always an interesting topic since the three companies have collectively attracted over 17 million broadband customers to the new business line. There were some interesting findings from Ookla worth discussing.

Ookla noted that 70% of FWA speed tests come from urban areas. That doesn’t seem surprising to me since that is where most people live. While FWA was originally touted as a rural technology, the fact that it’s marketed at prices below other broadband technologies makes it very attractive in urban areas.

Ookla notes that T-Mobile has the fastest download speeds, with a recent median speed of 222.7 Mbps, which is 38.4% faster than AT&T and 76% higher than Verizon speeds. I think Ookla missed the likely reason for this, which is that AT&T and Verizon both have legacy telco bases and have legacy customers. T-Mobile has no legacy business and likely sells FWA only to customers within a few miles of cell towers. The other two companies are using cellular technology as the alternative that allows them to tear down copper lines. They will offer this technology far away from towers, even if the speeds are exceeding slow, as long as a connection will support a voice signal – which is the regulatory requirement they are supposed to meet to justify discontinuing copper. Both companies also have a significant base of legacy cellular hotspot customers who can be far away from a tower getting much slower speeds. These hotspots are functionally equivalent to FWA, but are marketed differently, with small monthly data caps. When I’ve examined the speed tests for the three carriers for customers within a few miles of a cell site, they all deliver similar speeds.

Ookla also notes that T-Mobile’s Q2 2026 median upload speed of 18.1 Mbps was 80.1% higher than AT&T and 48.5% higher than Verizon – for many of the same reasons. The really interesting finding was that less than 40% of FWS speed tests in 48 states are exceeding the FCC’s definition of broadband at 100/20 Mbps. I assume that most of those that don’t meet that standard are doing so because of upload speed. This goes a long way towards explaining why the current FCC is not willing to consider increasing the definition of broadband above 100/20 Mbps, since that might declare that FWA, satellite service, and some WISPs are not really broadband per the FCC definition. The current FCC seems hellbent on being able to claim that satellite broadband has solved the rural broadband gap.

All three companies saw slower speeds in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the first quarter. Ookla likely correctly pinned this on foliage. It’s easy to forget when we discuss cellular coverage that it is weakened by foliage just like every other wireless technology. It raises the interesting question of whether a service is really broadband if it only meets the FCC definition of broadband in the winter?

Ookla recognized a huge 60% increase in AT&T broadband speeds comparing the second quarter of this year to the third quarter of 2025. AT&T has deployed 50 MHz of additional spectrum during that time that it purchased from EchoStar. The AT&T cellular speeds at my house more than doubled this past spring. This is a good reminder that the carriers are constantly taking steps to increase performance. They are engaged in a fierce marketing war, and none of them wants to look like they have an inferior network.

Finally, Ookla noted that rural FWA broadband speeds and latencies are lower than in urban areas for all three carriers. There are two explanations for this. First, not all rural cell towers are equipped to the same standard as urban towers. But this also comes back to the distance issue. In rural areas, customers are willing to try FWA even when it doesn’t have superfast speeds – because a 25 Mbps download on FWA beats the alternatives available. A household can often add FWA for $35 per month to an existing cellphone plan, which is considerably cheaper than Starlink at $130.

Adoption of WiFi 7

Ookla recently published a research article that documents the implementation of WiFi 7 in the U.S. and around the world. WiFi 7 routers were introduced to the market in early 2024, and Ookla reports that deployment of WiFi 7 routers has already grown to 7.2% in the country. That’s a pretty big uptake in a year and a half, considering that broadband customers generally hang on to WiFi routers unless changing service providers.

It’s not surprising that WiFi is being adopted. WiFi 7 brings a big improvement over WiFi 6 and earlier generations of WiFi. WiFi 7 can theoretically reach much faster speeds, and in practice delivers faster speeds and performance inside the customer premise. Some of the specific benefits include wider data channels inside the home, particularly for customers who have devices that can use 6 GHz spectrum, which is 1,200 MHz of bandwidth between 5.925 GHz and 7.125 GHz. WiFi 7 has better data throughput to devices by the use of 4K-QAM, has better performance from preamble puncturing that can bypass interference, and has faster speeds for specific applications due to multi-link operations that let the router combine multiple frequency bands when needed. WiFi 7 has also doubled the number of simultaneous devices that can be connected from eight to sixteen.

As might be expected, the growing WiFi 7 adoption is mostly coming from ISPs. Charter is currently the biggest user of WiFi 7 in the world. In the U.S., the new technology is being deployed by other large ISPs like Comcast, Frontier, and CenturyLink. It’s likely that the upgrades to WiFi 7 will continue. For years, ISPs have been frustrated by a large percentage of customer complaints about broadband that are actually due to poor customer-provided WiFi modems.

Interestingly, the U.S. is leading the world in WiFi 7 adoption. Part of the reason for this is that China is not stressing the use of WiFi 7 inside the country since the nation has decided to use 6 GHz spectrum for cellular traffic instead of for public WiFi.

The impact of the WiFi 7 routers is dramatic. Ookla cites speed test statistics for Comcast that show that upload speeds have more than doubled for some customers strictly due to the installation of a new WiFi 7 modem.

WiFi technology isn’t sitting still. The first prototypes of WiFi 8 modems should be produced later this year, with commercial production is about two years. WiFi 8 adds even more features that will help the customer experience. The most interesting new feature is Dynamic Sub-band Operations (DSO) that will allow the WiFi router to assign tiny bandwidth channels instead of a full channel when connecting to devices that don’t need much bandwidth. WiFi 8 also has the ability to coordinate with neighboring WiFi routers to cut down on interference. There will be a new technology called Distributed Resource Units and ELR that will improve the upload path to cut down on upload stutters from devices like security cameras and smartphones.

There is even more improvement coming with WiFi 9. The official specifications should be released in early 2027, with commercial adoption likely coming in the early to mid-2030s.

Millimeter Wave Broadband

For those who follow everything about broadband speeds, Ookla published a recent article talking about the deployment of millimeter wave spectrum in U.S. cellular networks. You might remember the big burst of marketing in 2000 when Verizon commercials bragged about gigabit speeds on cellphones. These fast speeds were enabled by millimeter wave spectrum that had been deployed at the time in a handful of urban business districts. At the time, Verizon told investors that millimeter wave was going to be the future of cellular, and that cellular broadband was going to be able to compete head-on with cable and fiber networks. They had plans on the drawing board to deploy the technology deep in neighborhoods.

As a reminder, millimeter wave spectrum uses much higher frequencies than are normally used for cellular service. Before the Verizon marketing blitz, the company had purchased a lot of 28 GHz spectrum from Straight Path and XO Communications. That’s a significantly higher frequency than the mid-range spectrum (1 – 4 GHz) used for cellular service. It’s called millimeter wave spectrum because the radio waves for 28 GHz are extremely short. AT&T also dipped its toe into millimeter wave spectrum with the acquisition of 29 GHz spectrum.

The Ookla article points out that many of Verizon’s millimeter wave spectrum deployments are still in use, and the use of millimeter wave spectrum is growing. Ookla cites statistics compiled by its RootMetrics effort, where the company sends people to take random cellular speed tests in markets around the country. When those in-person tests are combined with the normal Ookla speed tests conducted by the public, the Ookla article shows that in the second half of 2025, that 2.2% of Verizon cellular speed tests used millimeter wave technology, while 0.2% of AT&T used the higher spectrum. T-Mobile had virtually no millimeter wave usage.

The report demonstrates the issues with using millimeter wave spectrum. The technology can deliver gigabit speed, but the effective distance from a transmitter is very short. RootMetrics found millimeter wave speed test connections mostly within 500 feet of a transmitter, even though the spectrum can theoretically carry for a half mile. That short distance limits the use of the spectrum to high traffic areas where the extra spectrum can help relieve pressure on the other cellular spectrum bands. In case you’re wondering, most high-end cellphones manufactured since about 2001 include the ability to receive the millimeter wave spectrum. Most of the rest of the world, other than South Korea, never activated millimeter wave spectrum in networks or cellphones.

Interestingly, this report also tells a similar story about C-Band spectrum (3.7 – 4.2 GHz). Most RootMetrics speed tests for connection using C-Band were found within a half mile from a tower, although the spectrum can theoretically carry for two miles. This is good proof that, while cellular speeds are improving, the fastest speeds are found relatively close to towers. The older spectrum bands used for cellular, like 700 MHz and 900 MHz, carry for many miles, but carry far less bandwidth.

The Ookla report goes into detail about the coverage found in a few markets. For example, the  report includes a map of millimeter wave just south of downtown Denver that shows small pockets of good coverage next to areas with poor coverage, again demonstrating the distance limitations on the technology. The report is well worth reading.

AI Needs Quality Upload Speeds

The pandemic exposed a huge weakness in cable company networks when it became clear that their networks did not have enough upload capacity to support people working and schooling from home. That period when people struggled to work from home might have been the trigger to convince millions of people that fiber was superior to cable technology. The cable companies reacted quickly and goosed upload speeds to the range of 30-40 Mbps. Since then, they have slowly been upgrading to much faster upload speeds using mid-splits and DOCSIS 4.0.

A recent article from Ookla suggests that the same need for faster upload speeds might be coming for cellular networks due to the way that people are starting to use AI in daily life. The article provides some examples of ways we might use AI in the near future. A person might scan a menu in a restaurant, and AI can provide real-time feedback to estimate the calories in each dish or highlight foods that might trigger an allergic reaction. This would require quickly uploading a picture of the menu to provide quick feedback. That’s not a data-intensive transaction, but consider instead using AI to provide real-time feedback to somebody walking around in a foreign city. AI could translate signs and describe the nature of stores or shops as they come into view.

 

U.S. cellular companies have allocated the smallest percentage of bandwidth to upload compared to the major cell providers around the world. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have allocated between 6.6% and 7.1% of total bandwidth capacity to upload. In contrast, China Telecom and China Unicom have allocated over 16% of bandwidth to upload.

In writing this blog, I took a speed test on AT&T and got a speed of 381/11 Mbps on my cellphone. I note this is the fastest download speed I’ve ever received on AT&T, by a lot, and shows the impact of the AT&T’s recent introduction of the spectrum acquired from EchoStar. I took several other tests with similar results, and at my house, the upload speeds are only about 3% of total bandwidth.

American cellular carriers seem to be in a race to claim the fastest network for bragging rights, and this has led them to maximize download speeds to an extreme degree. I doubt that many people are complaining except for folks who are trying to stream video from their phone. When I swap my phone over to WiFi, the upload speed in my Charter connection is more than 10 times faster than the AT&T cellular upload connection.

The article points out that carriers have options to boost upload speeds. The one that is discussed the most in the article is to convert cellular networks to dynamic TDD (time division duplexing), which would allow the phone to assign bandwidth available to the phone to either download or upload, according to the immediate need.

But that fix alone wouldn’t solve the problem, because a carrier would need to beef up the entire network in the upload direction to handle larger volumes of uploaded data. There are other interesting limitations. For example, if a carrier uses shared spectrum like CBRS for uploading, then setting a faster upload would have to be coordinated with the other major users of the spectrum to synchronize the network clocks.

The Ookla article also demonstrates that handsets can be a limitation by showing the upload speeds that can be achieved on different generations of Samsung Galaxy phones. with lower upload capability on older phones.

The slow upload speed on my tests might be an anomaly, but before AT&T introduced the new spectrum, my upload speeds were rarely faster than 5 Mbps. Ookla says that median upload speeds in the second half of 2025 were 18 Mbps for AT&T, 21 Mbps for Verizon, and 27 Mbps for T-Mobile – all slow in comparison to fiber and upgraded cable technologies.

Ookla’s WISP Report Card

Ookla published a WISP Report Card in November that looks at the speed performance of eight large WISPs – Etheric Networks, GeoLinks, NextLink, Resound Networks, Rise Broadband, Starry, Unwired Broadband, and Wisper Internet. Since this article was published, Starry has been acquired by Verizon. Ookla trended speed test results for each WISP by quarter from Q1 2021 through Q2 2025.

The results of the speed tests for most WISPs were not spectacular. The best performing WISP was Starry, with 67% of customers achieving a speed that meets the FCC definition of broadband of 100/20 Mbps. Rise Broadband performed the worst, with only 6.7% of customers achieving 100/20 Mbps speeds. However, speed isn’t always a fair metric since some of the WISPs sell products with lower speed thresholds. For example, GeoLinks says its most popular product is 30/30 Mbps.

It’s also hard to compare the biggest WISPs because they have different business plans and use different spectrum. For example, Starry uses the 37.1, 37.3, and 37.5 GHz bands of millimeter wave spectrum, mostly serves apartment buildings, and places base stations within a mile of customers. Most of the other WISPs are more traditional rural WISPs using a mix of unlicensed and licensed spectrum. Following is a short summary of each of the eight WISPs.

Etheric Networks.  8.4% of customers achieve 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 41/30 Mbps. The company used traditional unlicensed spectrum. The company markets speeds from up to 100 Mbps to up to 1 Gbps.

GeoLinks.  8.7% of customers achieve 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 23/20 Mbps. The company uses a combination of LMDS, unlicensed 5 GHz, and millimeter wave spectrum. Marketed plans range from 10/10 to 100/25 Mbps.

NextLink.  24.4% of customers achieve speeds of 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 68/18 Mbps. The company purchased 1,100 CBRS PALs licenses. The company markets speeds between 50 and 500 Mbps. The company is midway through network upgrades funded by RDOF, so speeds should increase significantly.

Resound Networks. 41.5% of customers achieve speeds of 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 99/31 Mbps. The company uses unlicensed 5 GHz and 6 GHz spectrum. The company offers speed packages between 75 Mbps and 1 gigabit.

Rise Broadband. 6.7% of customers achieve speeds of 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 43/18 Mbps. The company uses a combination of unlicensed spectrum and CBRS. Speed packages range from 50 to 400 Mbps. The company claims to be the largest WISP with 200,000 customers.

Starry. 66.9% of customers achieve 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 202/54 Mbps. Starry uses millimeter wave spectrum to reach apartment buildings in five major metropolitan markets. The company markets speeds between 200 Mbps and 1 Gbps. Speeds have nearly doubled since 2021.

Unwired Broadband  21.8% of customers achieve a speed of 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 50/17 Mbps. The company uses a combination of licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Pricing plans start at 100 Mbps.

Wisper Internet. 26.0% of customers achieve a speed of 100/20 Mbps. Median speeds are 53/12 Mbps. The company uses unlicensed 5 GHz and a mix of licensed and unlicensed 2.5 GHz and CBRS spectrum. Speed plans range from 25 to 400 Mbps.

A few things to observe about the group. The article points out that rural WISPs are seeing serious speed competition from Starlink, which will intensify when Starlink starts launching its next generation of satellites in 2026. Some of the WISPs have improved speeds significantly since 2021, although a few have not. Some of the WISPs are doing upgrades to much faster radios and it will be interesting to see a future article showing speed trends in a few years. Like with satellite broadband, the overall weakness of most of the WISPs today is the upload speeds.

Falling FWA Speeds

Ookla recently published a report looking at broadband speeds being delivered with FWA cellular broadband offered by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

The report includes the chart shown below that tracks the median download speeds of each carrier, by quarter, since the third quarter of 2023.

There are some interesting stories in the chart:

  • At the end of the third quarter of 2023, the median download speed was nearly the same for all three carriers, between 140 and 150 Mbps.
  • Since then, T-Mobile speeds have increased significantly, peaking at 221.7 Mbps at the end of the first quarter of 2025. T-Mobile’s median speeds are now twice the speeds of AT&T.
  • The Ookla blog talks about the fact that speed for all three carriers dropped from the second quarter of this year to the end of the third quarter. AT&T dropped from 114.3 Mbps to 104.6 Mbps. T-Mobile dropped from 221.7 Mbps to 209.1 Mbps. Verizon has the largest drop from 167.3 Mbps to 137.8 Mbps.

Ookla asks the question of why speeds dropped during those two quarters. They expect that some of the drop is due to foliage that slows down cellular signals from late fall until autumn. Foliage is clearly an issue in many parts of the country.

Ookla also asks the question if the networks are experiencing problems due to oversubscription. The three carriers have seen extraordinary growth. At the end of the third quarter of 2023 there were just under 7 million FWA customers. By the end of the third quarter of this year, the companies had just under 14.5 million customers, having added over 7.5 million FWA customers in two years.

It’s clear that FWA customers put a lot of stress on a cellular network. Assuming that FWA customers are the same as other broadband customers, the average U.S. broadband customer used over 640 gigabytes of broadband per month at the end of the third quarter, compared to 17 gigabytes for the average cellphone customer. From a bandwidth perspective, an FWA customer uses 38 times more cell site resources than a cellular customer.

The questions that Ookla is asking are not easily answered because FWA is not a homogeneous broadband product. Customers must be located near a tower to get the fastest speeds, and speeds drop off as the distance between customers and a tower increases. Consider AT&T, which has been using FWA as a replacement for DSL. This likely means AT&T is offering FWA to customers at a greater distance from towers than the other two carriers, in order to provide that copper alternative. That alone could contribute to AT&T’s lower median speeds.

The FWA market isn’t going to remain static. AT&T recently upgraded 23,000 cell sites with the 3.45 MHz spectrum the company acquired from EchoStar. That should cause a big upward spike in AT&T FWA speeds this quarter.

The Ookla report is fascinating. It will be interesting to watch the FWA speeds over time to better understand seasonality, foliage, and the impact of rapid customer growth.

Limiting Large Network Outages

Ookla recently published an interesting article that emphasizes what I have been telling folks for a long time. Not that many years ago, telephone and broadband networks were structured in such a way that most outages were local events. A fiber cut might kill service to a neighborhood; an electronics failure might kill service to a larger area, but for the most part, outages were contained within a discrete and local area.

There were exceptions. Rural areas have been susceptible to fiber cuts in the fiber that provides Internet backbone. Years ago, I worked with Cook County, Minnesota, which would lose voice and broadband every time there was a cut in the single fiber between Minneapolis and northern Minnesota that supported the area. A public-private partnership was created to build the THOR network to solve backhaul failures in a large chunk of southeastern Colorado.

https://www.ookla.com/articles/building-digital-resilience-strategies-2025

As the article points out, this has all changed because network operators have consolidated and interconnected networks across large geographic areas. Ookla says that the new phenomenon of large scale outages is a direct result of digital transformation. As carriers, companies, and governments have grown increasingly reliant on cloud services, managed providers, and interconnected networks, they now have to live with outages where what used to be a local problem can cascade across a region, or even across the country.

The article looks at the recent power outage in Spain and Portugal that quickly grew from a local outage to a power outage across much of the Iberian Peninsula. Ookla points out that in today’s world, there is not that much difference between outages of a power grid, a cellular network, or a fiber network.

The article points out that outages can cascade much faster than anybody expects. The difference between a temporary disruption and a system-wide crisis depends on how quickly the network operators can recognize and analyze the causes of a problem. Ookla says there are five key steps needed to keep disruptions from escalating. Every major network outage is likely due to network operators failing at one of the early steps of this process.

  • Detection: Spot the first signs of trouble across multiple data sources, from outage reports to operator dashboards.
  • Attribution: Identify the root cause of the problem, whether it’s an internal software bug, a fiber cut, or a regional power failure.
  • Communication: Share timely, accurate information with stakeholders and the public to reduce confusion.
  • Remediation: Act quickly to contain damage, restore critical services, and prevent cascading failures.
  • Learning: Capture lessons from each event and feed them back into playbooks, exercises, and long-term resilience planning.

Ookla believes that the local reaction within the first hour can make a huge difference in the extent and length of an outage. There was one power company in Iberia that was able to isolate itself from the cascading shutdown because it was prepared to react quickly. I wonder how many local ISPs are ready to quickly react to problems caused outside their local network. The Ookla article suggests that local operators can do a lot more to protect themselves and their customers against major outages.

Indoor Cellular Coverage

Ookla wrote a recent article that highlights an increasing problem of poor indoor cellular coverage. The article notes that this is a growing problem since the public increasingly relies on cell phone apps.

Indoor cell coverage is growing poorer for several reasons. First, 5G carriers are migrating to higher mid-band frequencies, which don’t penetrate buildings as well as the lower frequencies used in the past. Years ago, cellular networks widely used 700 MHz and 900 MHz frequencies, which had the wonderful property of penetrating almost anything. I remember being amazed a decade ago when I didn’t lose a cell call in an interior elevator of a building. In recent years, I’ve noticed that my cell phone doesn’t work at the back of my neighborhood grocery store – but it did a decade ago. The problem is only going to get worse as cellular carriers migrate more 5G traffic to higher mid-band spectrum bands (3 GHz and higher).

There are also some changes in buildings that make it harder for wireless signals to penetrate. Ookla cites the increasing use of low-E glass, an energy-efficient glass with a microscopic coating that reflects heat and light – and also cellular signals. Ookla says that modern insulation materials, in general, are less friendly to cell signals.

Ookla also lays some of the blame on regulations that completely focus on outdoor cell coverage and has never acknowledged that 80% of cellular traffic originates from indoors (Ookla cites Ericsson for that statistic). The FCC adopted a minimum standard for outdoor cellular speeds of 25/3 Mbps in October 2020 as part of the 5G Fund for Rural America order. Interestingly, at that time, that was a higher speed than the definition of landline broadband that was still stuck at 25/3 Mbps. A few countries like Germany and Ireland require decent indoor cellular speeds for structures like hospitals, busy business districts, and tourist attractions.

There are some solutions to the problem. One would be for regulators to require better cellular speeds to match how people use it. That may sound like an easy fix, but it’s not.

The best way to improve cellular speeds is to use small cell sites that are closer to homes and businesses. A signal from a cell site in a neighborhood will penetrate nearby buildings a lot better than a signal from a tall tower a mile or more away. One of the limiting factors of cellular call strength that doesn’t get mentioned very often is that the power from cell site is restricted and limited. This is done to stop neighboring tall towers from interfering with each other. Stronger signals would penetrate buildings better but would wreak havoc with existing cellular networks.

Some businesses have tackled the problem on their own. Many hotels, hospitals, and business high-rises have invested in a rooftop cellular repeater (which is really a small cell site) that beams a signal down through the building. That strengthens the signal inside a building but nowhere else.

Ookla recommends an interesting solution, which is to embrace a neutral host model of telecommunications. This would have third party companies build, own, and operate cellular infrastructure, which would be leased to multiple service providers on a wholesale basis. Think of this as the open-access version of infrastructure. A neutral host company would build cell sites where they are most needed by the public and lease capacity to all cellular carriers. Unfortunately, that model has not ever been embraced in the U.S. In fact, Crown Castle, which was the predominant company chasing the neutral hosted model, announced in March that it is selling its small cell business and related fiber networks to Zayo and EQT.

Growing Urban/Rural Broadband Gap

Ookla recently published a report that looks at statistics related to the digital divide. Ookla is in a unique position to understand U.S. broadband since the company is the most popular speed test company that gathers huge numbers of speed tests from all over the country.

Here are some of the key findings of the report:

  • 32 states saw an increase in the digital divide between urban and rural households in the second half of 2024. Ookla measured this by looking at the median broadband speeds for urban versus rural parts of each state, and in these states, the gulf between urban and rural increased.
  • Overall speeds are up, and 17 states saw an increase in the percentage of speed tests faster than 100/20 Mbps, with New Mexico, Colorado, and Minnesota having the most improvement.
  • The number of states where at least 60% of users realized speeds of 100/20 Mbps or faster increased from 9 in the first half of 2024 to 22 in the second half of the year.
  • The states with the highest percentage of users seeing fast speeds are New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, North Dakota, and Maryland. 19 states and the District of Columbia had at least 60% of speed tests faster than 100/20 Mbps.
  • Alaska and Montana had the worst broadband performance with less than 40% of users receiving speeds faster than 100/20 Mbps.
  • South Carolina is the only state that saw improvements in broadband performance in both urban and rural parts of the state.

Some states showed dramatic improvements in the percentage of speed tests above 100/20 Mbps. New Mexico climbed from 31.85% in the second half of 2023 to 52.37% in the second half of 2024, an improvement of 20.5%. Other big increases were Colorado at 19.1%, Pennsylvania at 18.5%, Minnesota at 17.4%, and Washington at 17.2%.

Ookla cited reports from the Fiber Broadband Association that shows that 56.5% of homes were passed by fiber at the end of 2024, an increase of 10.3 million new fiber passings during the year. Ookla credits the overall increase in speeds and the percentage of users seeing speeds faster than 100/20 Mbps on these investments.

Ookla came to the overall conclusion that urban broadband is improving at a faster pace than rural broadband. I was surprised by this finding. While it’s true that BEAD grants have continued to move slowly, there was a huge amount of broadband upgrades in rural markets last year. Many billions of dollars were invested in fiber from grant programs like the Capital Project Funds, Reconnect, and RDOF. A lot of rural communities have also started to see the much faster radios from WISPs and cellular carriers. But even with those improvements, speed improvements in urban areas are outpacing improvements in rural America.

Rural 5G

The FCC voted last year to launch the 5G Fund for Rural America to expand 5G coverage into the many parts of country with poor cell coverage. It may turn out that market forces might mean that some of that subsidy won’t be needed since the big carriers are expanding into rural areas. A recent blog from Ookla documents the rural expansion of 5G. Ookla concludes that fierce nationwide competitive pressure is driving the carriers to look harder at rural areas to gain every possible customer.

Ookla, which collects a huge volume of speed tests, is one of the few companies that can look at carrier expansion using its own data. When Ookla sees multiple speed tests on 5G, it has definitive proof that coverage is present in an area. Ookla looked at the recent rural expansion from each of the three primary carriers.

T-Mobile. Ookla shows that T-Mobile has the largest rural 5G footprint today. T-Mobile claims it covers 323 million people, or 98% of U.S. households with 5G using its low-band 600 MHz spectrum. This low-band spectrum carriers for a greater distance than the spectrum used by other carriers. The company was required to expand coverage to 97% of the population as part of the agreement with the FCC when it purchased Sprint. I have to wonder about the 98% coverage. If you look closely at the FCC cellular maps, T-Mobile shows coverage of very slow speeds over a lot of rural America, and you have to wonder if this coverage is real enough to even use for voice calls.

T-Mobile also is the fastest carrier in much of the country, which came from the deployment of the 2.5 GHz spectrum that the company acquired with the Sprint purchase. The company has used the 150 MHz band of the spectrum to increase speeds in the top 100 markets in the country. We know that T-Mobile has rural plans since the company announced in 2024 that it is hoping to achieve a 20% market share in rural America by the end of 2025. That claim is bolstered by the pending close of the purchase of 30% of the spectrum and all 4.5 million customers of UScellular.

AT&T. A lot of the company’s rural expansion comes from FirstNet. This is a nationally funded program to create a nationwide first responder network. AT&T was awarded $6.5 billion to build the network and also given 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum. FirstNet brought AT&T a 25-year contract with the government. There is an expected $2 billion additional investment to upgrade the network to 5G everywhere.

One of the key requirements for FirstNet is that it must be made available to first responders in rural areas. This led AT&T to install FirstNet on all of its own towers and to build over 1,000 rural towers. AT&T announced in October 2024 that it has 6.4 million connections and 29,000 public safety agencies on the network. AT&T has also invested heavily in spectrum auctions and spent $37 billion the FCC’s C-band and 3.45 GHz auctions.

Verizon. Verizon doesn’t own much low-band spectrum that would give it coverage in rural areas. Instead, the company relied on a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) that allows one spectrum band to toggle between 4G LTE and 5G  in 1 millisecond increments. While it works, this didn’t give the company the boost it was hoping for.

Verizon’s rural strategy seems to be through acquisition, and the company has bought cell carriers operating in Kentucky, Iowa, New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Montana. Verizon is also buying $1 billion of 850 MHz, AWS and PCS spectrum from UScellular.

Verizon is betting on the C-Band spectrum that it purchased in 2021 for $52 billion. It’s hoping that the 161 MHz band of spectrum will carry it into the future. The company has announced it intends to deploy more rural spectrum,

None of the carriers are likely to expand into sparely populated rural areas where coverage is often nonexistent. But the current expansion plans likely will bring cellular relief to a lot of rural areas, long before any solution might come from the FCC.