T-Mobile's aggressive marketing ploys seem to be working as the carrier is slowly inching its way to the top of the table in the best U.S. network operator's list.
According to a research conducted by the folks at Tom's Guide, which gauged how nine major U.S. network operators i.e. T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, MetroPCS, Cricket, Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile and Straight Talk compare against each other, T-Mobile emerged the best overall carrier with 91 points.
Verizon (89 points) and AT&T (85 points) rounded up the top three coming in second and third, respectively.
"Overall, T-Mobile topped our rankings of nine wireless carriers. The Uncarrier distinguishes itself with attractive plans, solid customer service and appealing bonuses like a generous approach to rollover data and extensive international coverage," notes Tom's Guide.
For its research and testing, Tom's Guide took into consideration five metrics namely: performance, plans, customer service, phone selection and extras. On a 100-point scale, these factors were awarded points on the basis of importance with performance being the most important (50 points), followed by plans (20 points), customer service (15 points), phone selection (10 points) and extras (5points).
The points garnered by each carrier on the different metrics was then accumulated for the overall score.
The Tom's Guide team based its rankings on the 4G tests conducted nationwide, for which the team traveled to nearly six cities to determine how the network operator in question performed. The team measured both the upload and download speeds at specific locations in each of the six cities. To do this they deployed the Speedtest.net app. The research team also timed how quickly it was able to download a specific application on each of the nine carriers' network.
The findings reveal that when it comes to performance, Verizon was the best followed by T-Mobile and AT&T. The plans metric saw T-Mobile score the highest followed by Verizon and Sprint.
Customer support saw AT&T take the highest score by a whisker with T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint all tied for the second spot. Phone selection also saw AT&T emerge the winner followed by T-Mobile and Verizon who tied for the same spot. The extras category saw T-Mobile take home the honors as well.
