Press release

New RootMetrics Reports Reveal Impressive Data Speed Improvements Across Three Utah Cities

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Sponsored by Businesswire

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.