T-Mobile CEO Says Network Catching Up With AT&T, Verizon

Drake. Legere said T-Mobile's network is getting better every day. In Q4, OpenSignal measured T-Mobile’s time coverage at 81 percent, “which means that T-Mo 4G customers saw an LTE signal 81.2 percent of the time no matter where and when they connected,” OpenSignal said Tuesday in a blog post. “The most obvious explanation is T-Mobile’s recent network buildout in the 700 MHz airwaves. Those low frequency airwaves can travel much further afield in suburban and rural areas, and in dense urban cores they can more easily punch through walls to provide stronger indoor signals.” OpenSignal measured AT&T’s coverage at 82.6 percent and Verizon’s at 86.7 percent. Legere also said that T-Mobile would broadcast a "surprise" second commercial as well during Sunday's Super Bowl. A Verizon spokesman questioned the OpenSignal results, which are based on crowdsourcing. “Surveys that use crowd-sourced data sound cool, but they can be misleading -- when you can’t reliably connect to a network, there’s no way to measure its performance or speed,” the spokesman emailed. “OpenSignal’s own methodology page on their website states that the results include ‘an inherent bias’ due to the crowd-sourced nature of the survey. Most respected, impartial third-parties that use actual testing equipment rate the Verizon Wireless network as fastest and most reliable -- in fact, in four national studies in a row, Verizon has won RootMetrics awards for best overall performance, reliability and speed.” An AT&T spokesman said the OpenSignal results don't "align with our own analysis or with other third party speed test data. We’re proud of the mobile experience we’re delivering so that our customers have fast, reliable service.”