AT&T Is Secretly Launching Its Latest 5G Network in NYC: We Test It Out
AT&T is giving its new mid-band 5G network a stealthy rollout throughout New York City, and we have the first exclusive test results. They show that if you've been struggling along with an iPhone 11 or XR on AT&T, it's finally time to switch to a new 5G phone.
Big Blue has had America's strongest 4G network in our tests since 2019, but it was outpaced by both Verizon and T-Mobile where mid- or high-band 5G was available in 2020 and 2021. In recent months, Verizon has announced a massive expansion of its faster mid-band 5G network, while AT&T has only announced eight cities, and doesn't show mid-band on maps.
On the word of some Twitter tipsters, though, I heard AT&T mid-band was taking Manhattan, so I headed out to check and found much more than I expected. AT&T is running mid-band 5G all the way up the dense east side of Manhattan; my phone showed band N77 (AT&T's mid-band) for up to a mile at a time.
This means big performance improvements. While AT&T has traditionally dominated in places like upstate New York, North Carolina, and Texas, New York City has always been a tough spot for the carrier. It was a real Verizon town for years, and in our 2021 results, T-Mobile showed the best performance.
To assess spectrum and performance, I used Wind Pro, a carrier-grade testing app from Ookla that we previously used to check out Verizon C-band in New York and AT&T C-band in Chicago. (Ookla, like PCMag, is owned by Ziff Davis.)
C-band just about doubles the performance we saw on AT&T. Along my route, AT&T's low-band "5G" network averaged 93Mbps down and had its fastest test at 173Mbps, which is similar to our Fastest Mobile Networks 2021 results. But the new C-band "5G+" network averaged 167Mbps down and had a fastest test of
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