Report: Largest US Cities Not Always the Best for Wireless Network Quality

According to a recent study done by Root Metrics, the largest cities in the country aren’t always providing the best wireless network service. The two largest cities in America, New York and Los Angeles, place 59th and 99th respectively in terms of network performance. One notable exception to this trend is Chicago, who placed fifth overall for network performance.

With roughly 62% of American adults owning a smartphone, network reliability is more important than ever to monitor. The study performed thousands of tests over the course of the first half of 2016, by using Android phones in in the top 125 most populous US cities. The cities were then ranked from highest to lowest across six different categories: overall performance, network reliability, network speed, data performance, call performance, and text performance. To give the study some perspective, Root Metrics compared the results with their findings from last year during the first half of 2015.

Some of the top performance in network reliability are Atlanta and Chicago, who’ve constantly placed well. Last year, the two cities placed in 1st and 2nd place, but fell just a few spots this year to 3rd and 5th in terms of overall performance. But the real trophy this year goes to a real dark horse candidate, Lansing, Michigan! Placing 117th in population, Lansing held the top score for overall performance in 2016. The city also placed first in reliability and call performance, and second in speed, data, and text. Pretty impressive for a little guy, huh?

On the other end of the spectrum, things aren’t looking too good for the residents of Hudson Valley, NY and Omaha, NE. The cities took the bottom two spots, at #124 and #125 and things don’t seem to be looking any better; the two cities were in the exact same spot that they found themselves in last year. Network performance was severely affected by a high frequency of dropped calls with T-Mobile reporting the two highest blocked call rates in the test at 12.3% for Omaha, and 6.9% for Hudson Valley.

If you’d like to check out the full report for further information, head over to Root Metrics!