Rural prospects get the fuzzy finish of the 5G mounted wi-fi entry (FWA) lollipop with regards to broadband obtain pace and latency, in line with the most recent Ookla Speedtest Intelligence information that reveals a efficiency hole between city and distant areas within the US.
Throughout AT&T, T-Cell and Verizon, median obtain speeds had been decrease for rural customers by between 26 Mbit/s and 49 Mbit/s, whereas multi-server latency was larger.
Ookla used the US Census Bureau’s urban-rural classifications to research 5G FWA Speedtest information for the primary time. It discovered that 70% of check samples got here from city areas and 30% from rural within the second quarter this 12 months, and the efficiency distinction is placing.
The hole in broadband pace by area was greatest for AT&T and Verizon. In Q2, the median obtain pace for AT&T’s Web Air in city areas was 174.2 Mbit/s in comparison with 132.6 Mbit/s in rural. The regional delta for Verizon’s 5G Dwelling Web was comparable: 148.3 Mbit/s in city versus 99.3 Mbit/s in rural. T-Cell, which outperformed throughout all metrics, had the least distinction with 230.7 Mbit/s in city versus 204.7 Mbit/s in rural.
City subscribers additionally skilled higher latency starting from 7 milliseconds to 13 milliseconds decrease, which implies purposes like gaming or video streaming are extra responsive with much less lag and buffering.
(Supply: Ookla)
Sue Marek, editorial director at Ookla, advised Gentle Studying the efficiency hole is because of the distinction in how mobile networks are designed relying on the situation.
“In dense city areas the wi-fi networks are engineered to accommodate extra individuals. Due to that, the sign travels shorter distances and towers are engineered to maximise efficiency,” she mentioned.
Verizon, for instance, makes use of mmWave spectrum in some cities “to push giant quantities of information a brief distance,” she added.
T-Cell tops the charts for FWA
T-Cell as soon as once more beat AT&T and Verizon with one of the best efficiency for FWA pace and latency, because it did in Ookla’s earlier two stories launched in December and March 2025.
T-Cell’s median obtain pace in Q2 (222.7 Mbit/s) was 38.4% sooner than AT&T and 76% sooner than Verizon. For uploads, T-Cell’s median pace was 18.12 Mbit/s in Q2, outpacing Verizon by 48.5% and AT&T by 80.1%.
Relating to latency, the service had constantly decrease charges in Q1 and Q2 this 12 months in comparison with its rivals.
AT&T is second to T-Cell on obtain pace and it confirmed a marked enchancment in comparison with final 12 months’s assessments. AT&T’s obtain charge was 167.34 Mbit/s in Q1, which is about 60% sooner than the Speedtest lead to Q3 2025.
Ookla mentioned the pace surge is probably going as a result of AT&T’s deployment of midband spectrum it acquired from EchoStar. The service mentioned in November that it had activated the three.45MHz spectrum in components of the community and that obtain speeds in these areas had been as much as 80% sooner for cellular providers and as much as 55% sooner for FWA.
Summer season’s not one of the best season for FWA
Nevertheless, leafy timber and warmth in the summertime will not be useful for FWA efficiency. All three carriers had worse check ends in Q2 than in Q1. Ookla attributed the drop to a possible “seasonal sample that we’ve got acknowledged over time.”
Ookla mentioned it has seen these declines in spring and summer time months when timber are “crammed with dense leaves that may weaken the FWA indicators.”
It additionally mentioned that hotter temperatures can drag down information speeds as a result of “the rise in thermal noise inside digital elements causes networks to default to slower modulation schemes so as to preserve a steady connection.”
Since efficiency throughout all carriers dipped in Q2, Ookla concluded that the seasonal adjustments are “an ongoing sample” for FWA.
As for state-level FWA efficiency within the first half of this 12 months, lower than 40% of Speedtest customers in 48 states skilled the FCC’s minimal broadband pace commonplace of 100 Mbit/s obtain and 20 Mbit/s add.
