BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Utah’s “Silicon Slopes” is known as a hotbed for technological companies and entrepreneurial growth. In these connected cities, mobile performance demands are high. New findings from RootMetrics by IHS Markit, the standard for mobile performance benchmarking, show that carriers in Salt Lake City, Provo and Ogden are continuing to improve, with a clear trend toward faster median data speeds and improving reliability.
While AT&T and Verizon shared the Overall Performance RootScore Award in each of the three cities, all carriers showed impressive improvements in Utah’s biggest metro areas.
Data Performance in Utah Cities
Verizon earned awards for network reliability, network speed and data performance in all three markets, with five outright wins and four shared awards. Verizon also recorded the fastest median download speeds in Salt Lake City and Ogden at 44.3 Mbps and 39.0 Mbps, respectively. AT&T, meanwhile, increased its download speeds in all three cities.
T-Mobile and Sprint, however, also showed significant improvements across all three cities. Notably Sprint delivered big gains in median download speed in every city. In fact, the carrier nearly doubled its median download speeds in Ogden and Provo, from 18.3 Mbps to 36.5 Mbps and 19 Mbps to 37.8 Mbps, respectively. Sprint also showed strong improvement in Salt Lake City, increasing its median download speed from 20 Mbps to 30.8 Mbps. Meanwhile, T-Mobile recorded the fastest median upload speeds in Salt Lake City, Provo and Ogden at 21.8 Mbps, 12.9 Mbps and 16.8 Mbps, respectively.
“Our data performance testing provides a thorough assessment of how mobile networks are improving across different cities and what it means for a consumer’s smartphone experience in states like Utah,” said Doug King, director of business development at RootMetrics. “With impressive data speed jumps across the board, carriers are working to ensure consumers in Utah will have a smooth, high-speed mobile experience. This is great news for residents of these three cities, but also for the growing economy as more businesses and tech companies settle into burgeoning areas like Salt Lake City.”
The data performance category reflects how well networks perform in downloading and uploading data and downloading files that approximate loading typical webpages or apps.
Comprehensive Testing
To evaluate the mobile experience in each city, RootMetrics conducted tests across all hours of the day and night using smartphones purchased off the shelf at carrier stores. Testing metrics for each city were as follows:
- Tests in Salt Lake City were conducted from January 10 through 15, including 48 indoor locations and while driving 714 miles.
- Tests in Provo were conducted from March 4 through 9, including 45 indoor locations and while driving 883 miles.
- Tests in Ogden were conducted from March 13 through 18, including 45 indoor locations and while driving 966 miles.
For details about RootMetrics testing, see the methodology section of the RootMetrics website.
About RootMetrics
RootMetrics by IHS Markit is mobile analytics that measures mobile network performance and offers insights into the consumer mobile experience. RootMetrics provides data on mobile network performance to help the networks improve and give consumers an end-to-end look at mobile performance. To ensure that RootMetrics results reflect real-world mobile usage, testing is conducted based on where, when and how consumers use their smartphones most often.
IHS Markit and RootMetrics are registered trademarks of IHS Markit Ltd. and/or its affiliates. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners © 2019 IHS Markit Ltd. All rights reserved.