A widespread shift from fixed-usage buckets to unlimited use should, all other things being equal, boost consumption. And that is what appears to be the case, according to Ookla tests of mobile internet access performance in the first half of 2017.
At the same time, overall speed increased about 19 percent overall. “During the past 12 months, improvements in technology and usage of available network spectrum led to a 19 percent increase in average mobile download speeds in the United States,” Ookla notes. “All four major carriers have boosted download speeds, but not all carriers are improving equally and not all areas of the country are seeing the same benefits.”
In its recent tests, average downstream speed grew to 22.69 Mbps, on average. Average upload speed over mobile improved four percent to 8.51 Mbps.
T-Mobile US clocked the fastest speeds, followed by Verizon Wireless.
One would expect the greatest impact of increased usage to occur on the AT&T and Verizon networks, since Sprint and T-Mobile US already offered unlimited access plans.
That is what the Ookla data suggests. “Our data shows that in the case of Verizon and AT&T, the percentage of test results with the lowest-end download speeds (those under 5 Mbps) shot up compared to the period before these unlimited data plans were widely available.”
Both T-Mobile US and Sprint are seeing the opposite effect: year over year, there were fewer instances of performance “below 5 Mbps.”
But usage on the AT&T and Verizon networks might not be due to actual congestion, but efforts to prevent congestion. Both firms say they might throttle maximum speeds after some amount of monthly usage by any single account.
Both Verizon and AT&T say unlimited customers may experience reduced speeds if customers exceed 22 GB in a month and the cell site is congested. That could explain the greater percentage of AT&T and Verizon accounts experiencing slower overall speeds.
So the AT&T and Verizon networks may not be saturated; just throttling heavy users.
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