T-Mobile led in 5G coverage on Midwest road trip, ZDNET tests find

ZDNET reporter Adam Doud drove from Chicago to Nashville, testing Verizon, T‑Mobile and AT&T 5G coverage across central Indiana and Illinois and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, and found T‑Mobile had the most extensive 5G coverage on the route. For the tests Doud used three Google Pixel 10 Pros, each loaded with one carrier eSIM and mounted on a board powered by an Anker Solix C1000 Gen 2, and ran nPerf to sample connectivity roughly 1,500 times per minute, producing more than 120,000 data points.

He also made hourly stopped speed tests using an iPhone 17 with three eSIMs mounted on a tripod. The analysis shows T‑Mobile with about 96.2% 5G coverage on the trip and the only carrier to register non‑standalone (NSA) 5G connectivity; AT&T and Verizon both logged 5G coverage above 35%.

Speeds were generally strong across 18 measured locations, with carriers rarely dropping into single‑digit results, and the report highlights a near‑4 Gbps downstream result for Verizon in Louisville. The article notes both that all three carriers had decent or good signal strength for over 80% of the trip and later summarises that they had decent or better signal strength for over 90% of the trip.

Doud cautions that the tests were conducted on interstates and congestion‑heavy stops, and says coverage on country roads could differ; he suggests a future article might test non‑interstate routes.

Key Topics

Tech, T-mobile, Chicago, Nashville, Verizon, At&t