AT&T is the fastest fibre provider in the USAT&T is the fastest fibre provider in the US

Telecoms operators always love a bit of one-upmanship, but this particular award has added significance, coming as it does at a time of intense fibre competition in the US market. The big operators are racing to build up their fibre footprints, one way or another, and will ultimately need the customer numbers in order to generate returns on those hefty investments.

According to data collected by Ookla between July and December last year, AT&T Fiber was the fastest ISP in the US with a median download speed of 357.45 Mbps and 286.93 Mbps in the uplink.

In isolation, that's clearly pretty fast. But there is also quite a gap between AT&T Fiber and the rest of the pack (see chart below).

Verizon comes in second with a median download speed of 277.41 Mbps, followed by Comcast's Xfinity, Cox and Charter's Spectrum in that order, all hovering around the 250 Mbps mark.

AT&T Fiber also recorded the highest network consistency in the Ookla test, with 95.3% of its samples meeting or exceeding the threshold of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload throughput. This time Verizon came in fifth, with a score of 91.1%.

And AT&T is also ahead when it comes to customer satisfaction. Ookla scores its customer ratings out of five, based on asking customers to rate their provider, and AT&T Fiber was well ahead with 3.74. There was a fair spread of scores in this category. Verizon came in second with 3.54, while bottom-ranked Cox picked up a rating of 2.88.

All of the above are important metrics for an operator that has adopted a pretty ambitious organic growth strategy in the US fibre market.

Late last year AT&T formalised plans to cover 50 million locations with fibre by the end of 2029; that's 45 million premises served by its own network build and 5 million or more from Gigapower, its joint venture with investment company Blackrock.

As of the end of the third quarter of last year AT&T served 28.3 million premises with fibre, but we should have an updated figure on Monday when it publishes year-end numbers. The telco is currently working towards an interim goal of 30 million by the end of this year, but it wouldn't be surprising to see that target change based on its current build rate.

The pressure is on for AT&T though because arch-rival Verizon is also looking to boost its fibre footprint and is doing so through M&A.

It brokered a US$20 billion deal to buy Frontier Communications in September, a move that will give it an additional 9 million-10 million fibre locations when the deal closes, which will likely be in the first half of next year. Verizon is shooting for 30 million-plus fibre passings by 2028, presuming the Frontier deal goes ahead, and 35 million-40 million "over time," which is perhaps a little more nebulous than we might like.

T-Mobile US is also looking to buy its way into fibre, incidentally, with the ongoing acquisition of Metronet, but as its stands its market presence is negligible.

It's worth pointing out that Ookla's latest data also covered the mobile market and T-Mobile led the way across various key metrics. Most notably, it was the fastest across all technologies combined and also came out on top in 5G with a median download speed of 281.52 Mbps.

Thus far the telco has been uncharacteristically quiet on the numbers, but the day is still young.

The Metronet deal will not give T-Mobile a place at the table in the Ookla testing immediately, one assumes, given that the operator has a fibre footprint of just 2 million homes, but it has ambitions for growth: it is looking to reach 6.5 million by the end of 2030.

As things stands, that leaves AT&T and Verizon to duke it out with the cablecos for fixed broadband supremacy. And as they commit yet more capital to fibre, rankings like Ookla's will only grow in significance.