If you’re living in Seattle, AT&T and Verizon will deliver the best overall mobile performance, T-Mobile is not far behind and Sprint is decent with the exception of poor data download speeds.
Those are the findings from Bellevue-based RootMetrics‘ fifth performance report, which ran 48,441 tests to analyze how the carriers compare in the Seattle region.
The company looked at three categories — data, call and text — and based on its scoring system, AT&T and Verizon tied for first with a score of 95 for combined performance. T-Mobile was third with 88 points, while Sprint finished last at 78.
The data portion of the report was the most in-depth section. Having its LTE service launch in Seattle within the past year dramatically increased AT&T’s data performance, as it tied with Verizon for first place in this category (Verizon had won this portion for the past four test periods).
On the flipside, not having LTE coverage in Seattle hurt Sprint and Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA, which has promised expansion of its new LTE network to the Emerald City by the end of 2013.
In terms of call performance, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all tied for first with a score of 97, while Sprint was close with 94. The top three carriers all had call failure rates of 0.8 percent or below, which means that about 1 in 150 calls would drop or block. Sprint, meanwhile, had a 1.7 percent call failure rate.
Finally, in terms of texting, all carriers demonstrated excellent results, as Sprint and T-Mobile’s text delivery speed “improved significantly,” from last year’s test.
The data, which was collected indoors and outdoors via the RootScout app on Android phones, was recorded from May 10 — 16 of this year. See the full report and methodology here.
Previously on GeekWire: AT&T has the fastest LTE network (if you can access it)
