Another week has passed, another comprehensive report has been put together to highlight the individual strengths and weaknesses of America’s largest wireless service providers on their path to ubiquitous 5G, as well as the immense challenges faced by the industry as a whole while slowly transitioning from 4G LTE connectivity to the new gold standard in mobile download speeds.

Sprint made huge gains in dozens of markets

Said balance is perhaps best illustrated by Sprint’s numbers in Los Angeles, where 5G median download speeds exceeded 60 Mbps in the first months of 2020, with 5G availability also sitting at a solid 25.1 percent. The aforementioned mid-band spectrum allowed Sprint to deploy 5G in 20 of the 55 cities surveyed by RootMetrics, and speeds were “generally strong”, occasionally doubling or even tripling the carrier’s 4G LTE scores.

But Sprint actually gained more in the grand scheme of things from LTE network improvements, boosting its average download speeds in no less than 47 of the aforementioned 55 markets, three of which saw absolutely mind-blowing hikes of more than 20 Mbps year-on-year.

T-Mobile’s stunning 5G availability numbers are not backed by significant speed upgrades… yet

Once again, the stats emphasize how T-Mo favored 5G coverage over speeds for the first phase in its grand 4G LTE-replacing plan, bringing a (mildly) improved signal in 42 of the 55 markets evaluated by RootMetrics.

The individual 5G availability results in these cities are for the most part absolutely spectacular, reaching as high as 60.3 percent in Boise, Idaho, 55.1 percent in Bakersfield, California, and 53.9 percent in Las Vegas, but the best 5G median download speeds are still below 50 Mbps, in a few places even losing out to T-Mobile’s “outdated” 4G LTE network.