Almost a year after rolling out 5G, AT&T and other major carriers' mobile network speeds don't quite live up to the hype _ yet.
That's according to PC Mag's annual analysis, which the technology website has conducted for the last 11 years.
This year, it tapped roughly two-dozen drivers in 26 cities to drive around and test downloads, uploads, latency and reliability on each carrier's network using Samsung Galaxy S10 and S20 series phones.
Roughly one year after major wireless carriers announced the beginning of 5G rollout across the country, PC Mag concluded that Verizon had the fastest 4G and 5G speeds, followed by AT&T and T-Mobile.
The Dallas Morning News has reached out to AT&T for comment.
Every carrier showed "significantly higher" download speeds and reliability over the previous year. Those increases, however, are mostly due to 4G improvements and not 5G, particularly on AT&T's network, according to the report.
"To make a long story short, AT&T 5G right now appears to be essentially worthless," according to PC Mag lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan, who authored the report.
Mirroring connectivity trends at the initial launch of 4G technology in 2012, the ramp up to advertised 5G speeds could take some time as carriers like AT&T expand their use of the wireless radio frequency spectrum.
PC Mag's analysis found AT&T had some of its best speeds in the country in its own backyard. The Dallas-based carrier has ramped up deployment of 5G in Dallas and other cities across the U.S., announcing in late July that it had reached nationwide 5G covering 205 million people.
But Verizon's overall connectivity in Dallas beat out AT&T, which demonstrated download speeds at just 18% of what Verizon offered, according to the report. PC Mag found that despite its download speeds, Verizon's 5G coverage was less prominent in the Dallas-area than AT&T's coverage.
"Verizon offers the only form of 5G that delivers a genuinely different experience from 4G_but there's hardly any of it available," Segan wrote.
