Mobile carriers have constantly been fighting to be the #1 carrier in the country, and Verizon has always been at the front of the competition. They have a better network that reaches more places than any other carrier, and up until now, nobody has been able to rival them. But has T-Mobile finally pulled ahead?

Availability

Verizon definitely still nails it on the head with availability and is still beating T-Mobile. Verizon has a signal 88.17% of the time compared with T-Mobile’s 86.6% of the time. And when it comes to coverage maps, Verizon is the only carrier that seems to completely cover the country. T-Mobile has many gaps on the West Coast where there are a lot of mountains making it difficult to get coverage without a strong tower infrastructure. But T-Mobile have been working hard to boost their coverage and compete with Verizon making it hardly even noticeable to most customers.

Speed

When it comes to speed, T-Mobile and Verizon have nearly identical speeds. They both run 14 Mbps download speeds, which is dang fast for a smartphone. The real difference in data speed is that Verizon has limited data plans while T-Mobile has been switching to more of an unlimited option. That means customers are able to get unlimited data at the fastest speed available from carriers. That’s a pretty big advantage for customers.

Price

T-Mobile kicks it out of the park when it comes to price comparisons with Verizon. And it just gets better with the number of phones a customer adds to the plan. On top of that, T-Mobile offers customer perk programs like T-Mobile Tuesdays where they give customers free movies, Uber and Lyft Rides, and even Restaurant.com gift cards for Valentine’s Day. Customers were even able to add 2 free lines to their plans for Black Friday, including getting free tablets to go with those lines. They even offer text marketing messages to remind customers to take advantage of their deals. If customers weren’t already happy paying less for their T-Mobile phones, the extra perks really do make a big difference.

Customer service

The biggest problem with T-Mobile compared with Verizon is that it doesn’t have as good of customer service. Customers report having to call in regularly for discrepancies on their bills, a problem that doesn’t seem quite as common with Verizon customers. However, with the price being so much cheaper, customers don’t seem to mind having a few issues with their bill.

What this means for your business

This means it is getting cheaper and easier for customers to own smartphones and easier for you to reach them with text marketing. But it also means competitors have easier access to reaching your customers. Your business needs to step up its game to offer the best text marketing to customers or they might get snatched up by another business using the technology you aren’t.