The fastest U.S. mobile and internet services of 2026: How did your provider do?
Telecommunication analytics company Ookla has released its U.S. Speedtest Connectivity Report for the first half of 2026, evaluating how internet service providers have performed thus far. T-Mobile came out on top, sweeping the mobile category, while AT&T Fiber and Verizon both picked up awards for fixed internet.
Ookla's report crowned T-Mobile the best mobile network and best 5G network in the U.S. overall, with a median download speed of 275.55 Mbps (or 314.38 Mbps on 5G). According to Ookla's analysis, T-Mobile offered the fastest mobile speeds across 47 U.S. states from January to June this year. The exceptions were North Dakota and Vermont, who had no winners, and Alaska, where GCI came out on top for mobile speeds.
T-Mobile also received the highest experience scores across mobile and specifically 5G networks, including when specifically used for gaming or streaming video, and was found to be the most consistent network as well. Coverage is the only category where T-Mobile didn't come in first, with Verizon and AT&T taking the top two spots instead.
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Even so, T-Mobile was the clear winner of the mobile category. While Ookla's rankings primarily focus on performance and don't take pricing or value into account, T-Mobile also had the highest consumer sentiment rating. Speedtest users gave T-Mobile an average of 3.77 out of five stars, while Verizon and AT&T scored 3.25 and 3.09 respectively.
Meanwhile, the fixed internet category belonged to AT&T Fiber. Ookla crowned AT&T Fiber the best internet service provider, with its median download speed of 374.75 Mbps making it the fastest fixed network. It was also the most consistent, and received the highest star ratings from consumers with an average of 3.63 out of five.
Verizon did offer the best fixed gaming experience, which Ookla determined by evaluating and scoring factors such as latency, upload and download speeds, and jitter. Even so, Verizon's gaming score was just over one point ahead of AT&T Fiber.
While these scores look at the U.S. as a whole, the report further breaks down median speeds and latency by state and city. Kansas had the fastest median mobile speed at 242.56, with T-Mobile the fastest provider in the state. For fixed internet, Connecticut had the fastest median download speed at 344.24 Mbps, its fastest provider being Frontier Fiber.
Ookla's report uses data gathered by the company's Speedtest service. Speedtest allows users to quickly check their internet's speed, measuring their download and upload rate as well as their ping. While it isn't clear how many U.S. Speedtest users' data contributed to this report, Ookla stated in its methodology that it receives hundreds of millions of results from across the globe every day.
