Comcast Leads in Download Speed: Opensignal

WASHINGTON, May 28, 2026 – Comcast led in three categories in a new Opensignal study on fixed broadband service: consistent quality, download speed, and video experience. AT&T had the best upload speeds, and Charter had the highest reliability score.

Opensignal says its speed scores represent “the typical everyday speeds a user experiences across a provider’s network,” based on daily measurements from connected devices. The research group’s consistent quality metric measures how often a network “meets the requirements for common applications” and incorporates speed, latency, and other measurements, and reliability measures “the ability of a household to connect to the internet and to successfully complete 'uninterrupted' tasks across multiple devices,” according to the report.

The measurements encompass Jan. 1 through March 31, 2026, and don’t include the recently closed Verizon-Frontier merger or T-Mobile’s fiber offering. ISPs that were tested include Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

On download speed, Comcast’s 228 megabits per second (Mbps) took the top spot, followed by Charter’s 220 Mbps and AT&T’s 201 Mbps.

AT&T had by far the best upload speeds at 120 Mbps, compared to second-place Verizon’s 58 Mbps. T-Mobile, whose tested home broadband service was entirely fixed wireless, came in last at 26.4 Mbps.

Of the cable companies, Comcast beat Charter with 46.9 Mbps compared to Charter’s 26.8 Mbps.

“This result comes from the high performance of AT&T’s fiber infrastructure,” Opensignal analyst Fiona Armstrong-Mills wrote.

The carrier has more than 32 million fiber passings, and is aiming to surpass 60 million by the end of 2030. It’s also been slower to roll out fixed wireless broadband than Verizon and T-Mobile.

Consistent quality rating were close among all the tested providers, with Comcast leading at 83.7 percent of tests and Verizon coming in second at 83.3 percent. T-Mobile had the lowest score at 78.8 percent.

The cable giants led in reliability, with Charter posting 761 points and Comcast following at 758. Opensignal used a 1,000-point scale.

Cable operators have been upgrading their networks to improve speeds, but have also been offering bundled fixed and mobile broadband in an effort to stave off losses to fiber and fixed wireless.

Opensignal’s report did not analyze satellite broadband, which some cable providers reported was beginning to be a source of competition in rural markets. SpaceX’s Starlink is the dominant provider of low-Earth orbit broadband in the U.S., but Amazon is working to increase its Amazon Leo constellation and enter the space.

An Ookla report found earlier this month that Starlink speeds improved in the second half of 2025. Starlink users saw median speeds of 127 * 21 Mbps, the company found.

That’s lower than speeds posted by terrestrial providers, but over the course of 2025 Starlink went from 17 percent of subscribers receiving median speeds of at least 100 * 20 Mbps — the federal high-speed broadband benchmark — to more than 44 percent, all while nearly doubling subscribers.