- It’s one thing to claim the best mobile network and another thing to convince consumers that it’s better
- T-Mobile had a terrible network for many years, making its success in the 5G era all the more challenging to win over consumers
- T-Mobile's success is attributed to network improvements and effective marketing
How did T-Mobile unseat Verizon as the big winner in the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Wireless Network Quality study for the first time?
Good old-fashioned engineering, along with a lot of strategic decision-making and an ability to call the right shots about what’s going to be important in the future, T-Mobile Chief Network Officer Ankur Kapoor told Fierce on a call.
In case you haven’t heard – and it’s been a busy week in the network news biz – T-Mobile on Thursday announced a “watershed moment” in the wireless industry: For the first time ever, T-Mobile was rated highest for network quality in five of six U.S. regions that J.D. Power surveys – signaling a big shift in customer perception. For more than 30 consecutive studies, Verizon won top honors. Not this time.
The J.D. Power results are based on surveys of 20,050 wireless customers over six months. Customers are asked to evaluate their experiences with their wireless service providers. J.D. Power then rolls all that up into what is called a “problems per 100” score.
“We have six regions. They tied or won five of them and Verizon tied of won four of them, so they can say they were more successful in the last six months than Verizon,” said Carl Lepper, senior director of technology, media and telecom at J.D. Power. “From a network point of view, T-Mobile couldn’t have timed it better.”
That timing matters, especially given where T-Mobile came from historically. Its network was not very good for many years and current management often points that out.
“This is a huge moment for us,” Kapoor told Fierce. “A decade ago, we did not have the best network. At one point in time we were a technology behind. Everybody was on LTE and we were still on 3G.”
One of the biggest disadvantages for T-Mobile was its lack of low-band spectrum when its rivals had legacy 850 MHz. T-Mobile had to build more sites and towers to compete.
Things really started to shift when it acquired 600 MHz spectrum in the FCC’s incentive auction that concluded in 2017 and has since added to that, putting it in a “very strong low-band position,” he said. Then with the Sprint acquisition, T-Mobile acquired a bevy of 2.5 GHz, giving it solid footing in the mid-band space.
Long time coming
Wall Street analysts have been identifying T-Mobile as “best network” in the 5G era for quite a while now and last year, the data analytics company Ookla declared T-Mobile as “best mobile network,” giving the company even more to brag about.
But that doesn’t mean consumers are hip to that message. Verizon spent decades building up its “best network” reputation and it takes years to turn customer perception around. Plus, “best network” is subjective; what’s best for one consumer doesn’t apply to all.
It was around the time the Ookla results were released when former T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert vowed to take its “best network” to a wider consumer audience. Newly installed CEO Srini Gopalan picked up that baton and came out swinging with the “Switching Made Easy” initiative that promises to switch Verizon and AT&T accounts over to T-Mobile in just 15 minutes.
T-Mobile hired actor Billy Bob Thornton, star of the addictive “Landman” series, to appear in commercials where he talks about the end of Verizon’s reign as best network and the rise of T-Mobile. That sparked some kickback from AT&T, which put out an ad of its own featuring Luke Wilson in a similar country setting and calling out T-Mobile for “untruths.”
T-Mobile: Customers know the score
While the marketing back-and-forth plays out publicly, T-Mobile executives say the underlying story is being told by customers themselves.
“Our customers are voting and saying T-Mobile has the best network. It’s not an accident. It’s something we have known for a couple of years now and now that perception is catching up with reality,” Kapoor said.
T-Mobile’s news about its J.D. Power win came out the day after Verizon’s network outage that lasted almost 10 hours. Fierce asked Kapoor about that and he declined the chance to bash his rival – something Verizon network executives also declined to do when Fierce asked them about AT&T’s big outage in 2024.
“It was not a good day for Verizon customers. Unfortunately, I can only imagine what their technology teams would have gone through,” Kapoor said.
Fierce reached out to Verizon about the J.D. Power survey and this is their statement: “Third-party awards and milestones are an isolated metric in time. Our focus is entirely on the 24/7/365 reality of keeping America connected every single day, and network excellence is our ongoing priority.”
One thing T-Mobile has done is deploy multiple spectrum bands on its cell sites, in part to provide consistency and reliability in how customers use the network. It also has the distinction of being the first to launch nationwide 5G Advanced, representing a significant upgrade in latency and the ability to leverage technology like L4S and more advanced carrier aggregation.
Impact of UScellular acquisition
Recall there was one region in J.D. Power’s study that T-Mobile did not get the highest score; that went to Verizon. It just so happens that North Central region in the Midwest aligns with USCellular properties. T-Mobile’s acquisition of UScellular’s business, sans the towers, closed in August and that’s where T-Mobile will be fortifying its assets.
Therefore, Kapoor said he can’t wait for the next J.D. Power study to come out because by that time, “we would have made significant progress.”
Lepper said he expects to learn more about what was behind Verizon’s outage in the not-too-distant future, but broadly speaking, Verizon isn’t doing a bad job.
“The way I look at it is Verizon has maintained a very high level of standard for their network,” he said. “Verizon didn’t screw up. It’s just that T-Mobile caught up to them and people’s opinion of their network caught up to them. I think AT&T is going to catch up to both of them too.”