- The big carriers all saw their median FWA download speeds drop from Q1 to Q3 2025
- Ookla said it’s tough to determine how much of that decline is due to congestion versus signal degradation from foliage
- But the data still shows “strong performance that’s getting better,” said analyst Jeff Moore
Fixed wireless access (FWA) speeds for major operators declined across the board during the second and third quarters of 2025, according to a new Ookla report. But how much of that is seasonal or due to network congestion is tough to say.
T-Mobile, which boasts the fastest average FWA speed, saw its median downlink dip from 221.65 Mbps in Q1 2025 to 209.06 Mbps in Q3 2025. Still, the latter is roughly double that of AT&T, Ookla noted, as AT&T’s median download speed dropped from 114.34 Mbps to 104.363 Mbps in the same period. Verizon FWA meanwhile declined from 167.30 Mbps to 137.81 Mbps.
What’s the deal? Well, spring and summer are a prime time for FWA signal loss due to all the tree leaves that sprout up, Ookla said – degradation that particularly impacts FWA using higher band spectrum like millimeter wave (mmWave). However, technology is improving on this front, as Tarana for instance uses tactics like beamforming and environment-based signal adjustment to combat foliage.
The other – and common - hypothesis is that operators are starting to exhaust their available spectrum, affecting performance for both fixed wireless and mobile service. Ookla Speedtest data shows FWA upload speeds also dipped for all the big 3 carriers this year.
“It’s not clear that these fluctuations in speeds that we are seeing are due to seasonality or if it’s an indicator of network congestion,” Ookla wrote.
Wave7 Research Principal Jeff Moore said he’s leaning towards congestion as the more probable culprit, “as nothing similar was seen in 3Q24.”
FWA speed down but performance still going up
A year ago, T-Mobile actually saw its median download speed steadily climb from Q1 to Q3 2024. Verizon’s dropped during that same period but picked back up after Q3. Whereas AT&T, which entered the FWA scene much later than its competitors, has seen a steady decline of Internet Air median download speeds.
“That said, the macro trend is for strong performance that is getting better,” Moore told Fierce.
For instance, T-Mobile’s download speed dropped from quarter-to-quarter but 209 Mbps is nothing to scoff at for the average consumer, he noted. The service is “more than adequate for most people and is greatly higher than speeds of years past.”
As for capacity, the analysts at New Street Research estimated AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon can currently support up to 32 million FWA customers and they have already added nearly 50% of that number. Operators could potentially increase that load to 36 million following the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) upper C-Band auction.
“Carriers have tools for managing this, including moving more traffic to fiber and boosting capacity at individual sites,” Moore said. “Adding more sites and even small cells can be done, depending on the local situation.”
AT&T – a rising FWA star?
AT&T’s overall FWA performance lags behind its peers, but perhaps not for long now that it’s acquired spectrum from EchoStar and USCellular.
When evaluating AT&T Speedtests in the 90th percentile (i.e., the customers that get the best user experience), Ookla saw those download speeds climb from 351.93 Mbps in Q2 2024 to 411.38 Mbps in Q3 2025. It probably helps AT&T has already lit up 23,000 cell sites with EchoStar’s 3.45 GHz spectrum.
AT&T’s median multi-server latency sits at 67 milliseconds, “consistently higher” than Verizon (54 ms) and T-Mobile (50 ms) but a notable improvement from 78 ms in Q3 2024, said Ookla.
In Moore’s opinion, “it is realistic that AT&T speeds could equal or surpass those of Verizon.” AT&T is still primarily focused on fiber (and replacing copper for that fiber), but he expects we’ll see more activity from Internet Air in 2026.