When you think of the places in the US with the best cell service, you’re probably thinking bustling high-tech metropolises or the downtown of the nation’s biggest cities. But according to a new report from OpenSignal, anyone wanting the highest-speed LTE the country can offer should head to Minneapolis, which took the crown for fastest average speed this time around.
OpenSignal uses an app on hundreds of thousands of users’ devices to take millions of speed tests across the country. It can parse the data by device, location, time of day, and network — which is how it produces reports crowning the fastest wireless network every few months.
But this time around, OpenSignal added up the tests in 35 major cities across the country between July and September to find a winner. Minneapolis came out on top with an average 4G data speed of 21.5Mbps down. That’s significantly better than the average US speed of 14Mbps, but it still lags far behind the average speed of countries like South Korea, which are laughing all the way up at 45Mbps.
The slowest city, on the other hand, was Las Vegas, which languishes at 11.65Mbps. In general, the Midwest performed well, with Detroit, Chicago, and St Louis joining Minneapolis at the top. Seattle was the only city to crack the top 5 from outside the region.
OpenSignal still has harsh words for the US’s performance when compared to the rest of the world. “When compared to global speeds, though, the majority of U.S. cities found themselves lacking. Only 14 cities had 4G speeds higher than worldwide LTE download average of 16.6 Mbps. And apart from Minneapolis only one other city averaged connections faster than 20 Mbps: Detroit.”
