Introduction to US Carriers

Author: Sophie Renshaw

Similar to Ireland and it's phone networks (Three, Vodafone, Meteor), the US also has a number of major carriers. The 5 largest US Carriers are Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular.

AT&T, formerly Cingular Wireless, serves the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

As of Q2 2016 AT&T had 131.8 million subscribers, the seconds largest carrier, only behind Verizon Wireless.

Cingular Wireless was founded in 2000 and in 2004 purchased AT&T Wireless Services for $41 billion, creating New Cingular Wireless Services.

In 2005 it was renamed to AT&T. AT&T offer a 2G/3G/4G/4G LTE network to their customers.

Both of our major customers, Crown Castle and ExteNet, support AT&T as one of their customers.

AT&T

Verizon Wireless is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the United States with 141.4 million subscribers as of Q2 2016.

Founded in 2000 as a joint venture with Bell Atlantic and Vodafone, Verizon Communications became sole owner in 2014.

It operates a 4G LTE network covering 97% of the U.S. RootMetrics in 2015 ranked Verizon as the best in overall national performance, reliability, speed, and data & call performance.

Verizon Wireless is supported by both of our major customers.

Verizon Wireless

With 67.4 million customers as of Q2 2016, T-Mobile is the United States 3rd largest Carrier.

Also supported by both of our customers, T-Mobile was officially founded in 2002.

It's network reaches 98% of American customers through a combination of it's 2G/3G/4G/4G LTE network and roaming agreements.

In 2013 MetroPCs, another large US carrier, merged with T-Mobile.

T-Mobile

Sprint Corporation is the 4th largest U.S. carrier with 59.5 million subscribers as of Q2 2016.

In 2005 Sprint Corporation merged with Nextel Communications forming Sprint Nextel Corporation.

Sprint provides a 3G/4G network to it's subscribers in the United States. Sprint is supported by both of our customers.

Sprint

U.S. Cellular is a regional carrier that is the fifth largest wireless telecommunications network in the U.S with 4.9 million customers as of Q1 2016. It was founded in 1983 as a subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems.

U.S Cellular offers 3G coverage through roaming agreements with native coverage mainly in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, parts of the East and New England.

They also offer 4G LTE to a number of states; Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and Southern Oregon.

U.S Cellular is planning to launch it's first market with VoLTE in Q1 2017.

Only one of our customer, ExtNet, supports U.S Cellular.

U.S. Cellular

U.S. Carriers RootMetrics

Assess your knowledge by seeing if you can answer the following questions:

1. How many major carriers are there in the United States?
2. How many of these do both of our customers support?
3. Using the RootMetrics resource above, find a few cities where the Carrier with the Overall Performance is the best.
4. In these cities where they came out top on overall performance, was there any area (speed, reliability, call/text/data performance) where they fell down?
5. Using the above resources, which U.S Carrier has announced that they are currently in the process of developing a 5G network?