How much damage is T-Mobile doing to its competition?

T-Mobile has been incredibly aggressive over the past year or so, not just with its Un-carrier moves, but by improving its mobile data network in America’s urban areas as well. While the company’s coverage outside of these urban areas is still pretty weak, these aggressive moves have really been taking a toll on the competition, especially AT&T if new analysis from BTIG Research is to be believed. 

T-Mobile’s mobile network — and in particular its coverage in non-urban areas — remains its biggest weakness. That said, T-Mobile’s strategy right now seems to be to concentrate on improving its mobile data network in urban areas where it’s shown huge improvements over the past couple of years. T-Mobile’s aggressive “Un-carrier” moves have also forced rivals to play defense by making similar moves of their own and new analysis from BTIG Research suggests that this is taking a particularly big toll on AT&T. Taking a look at some new data published last week by OpenSignal, BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk notices that while all major carriers’ LTE networks have posted slower speeds over the last year, the drop has been particularly steep at AT&T, which saw its download speeds fall from 9.1Mbps last April to 6.5Mbps this month. Piecyk isn’t surprised by this at all because he thinks it’s a result of AT&T’s aggressive efforts to outflank T-Mobile.