June 2026 marked the culmination of months, if not years, of planning for the FIFA World Cup. High-density events like this are where network congestion becomes most visible to users – not just at the event, but throughout their whole visit. As such, preparedness has to cover both the venues themselves, and the host cities where fans visit and stay before and after matches.

As the official telecommunication services sponsor of the event, Verizon's investments were broad. At event venues, Verizon deployed private 5G and FWA to support logistics like broadcast and retail operations. It also invested in local communities around the stadiums. However, all operators had to prepare for the increased traffic. AT&T launched its Turbo Live service in January as a premium offering to avoid congestion at live events and introduced a World Cup eSIM for visiting fans. Meanwhile, T-Mobile deployed its new Dynamic CX capabilities on its AI-powered Self-Organizing Network. These are designed to plan for and optimize network performance during large-scale events. It also promoted its T-Priority service for first responders.

Ensuring capacity for future network demands is critical. To that end, in June 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held the first U.S. spectrum auction in four years. This was a re-auction of mid-band spectrum, primarily licenses previously held by Dish. Verizon emerged as the top spender. It picked up licenses for denser urban markets. T-Mobile added the most licenses, with more of a focus on rural markets.

Both operators' acquisitions align with their relative opportunities for growth in our reporting. T-Mobile has a lower Coverage Experience score than other operators, so more spectrum in rural areas may help it extend service. However, T-Mobile leads across our experience and network performance categories. This performance advantage begins with its strong mid-band spectrum holdings and broad 5G deployment, but is aided by its investments in technologies like its AI-powered Self-Organizing Network. Here, Verizon's new urban spectrum, along with its own investments in AI-powered network technology, could help close the gap.

AT&T's auction spend was much more moderate. It purchased and deployed nationwide mid- and low-band spectrum from EchoStar in 2025. In this latest report we can see notable improvements in AT&T's speed results. The additional spectrum appears to have bolstered its 5G performance, and AT&T records a 39Mbps improvement in 5G Download Speed (as well as a 21Mbps improvement in overall Download Speed). This makes it the operator with the largest increase in both of these metrics.

Starlink also attracted significant attention at the auction, eventually purchasing just two licenses. This was amid speculation that it may be considering launching a consumer service. For this, it would need considerably more spectrum. Starlink purchased 50MHz of spectrum from EchoStar in September 2025 (and an additional 15Mhz in November), but still holds far less than the three major U.S. carriers. Its next opportunity to acquire significant quantities of U.S. spectrum is the upper C-Band auction, due by July 2027. However, it will be several years before Starlink, or anyone else, can deploy this spectrum. This is due to the need for incumbents to migrate off the spectrum, and FAA-mandated upgrades to aircraft radio altimeters to mitigate potential interference.

Starlink's direct to device (D2D) service is currently available to consumers via T-Mobile, and is primarily for emergency connectivity. This is for areas where terrestrial coverage is not available, such as coverage holes or during outages. Looking ahead, the major U.S. carriers are defining their role in the D2D ecosystem through a new joint venture. This will allow them to pool resources, mostly spectrum, to add network redundancy and encourage satellite innovation. All of this aims to provide ubiquitous, reliable service to consumers.

In this report we examine the current mobile network experience of the three main mobile network operators in the U.S. — AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon — over a period of 90 days starting on April 1, 2026, and ending on June 29, 2026, to see how they fared. This report includes updated category names for clarity and simplicity, with no change to our metrics or underlying methodology.