Stati Uniti: la copertura

Cosa vogliono dire i numeri di Stati Uniti

Contano due numeri e solo uno è quello che citano tutti. La velocità tipica, 64 Mbps, dice com'è un buon momento.

Il decimo percentile, 11 Mbps, è quello che vale la pena leggere. È la velocità nel decimo peggiore della giornata, quando la cella sopra la stazione è piena e tutti intorno a te ci sono dentro. Un paese con mediana alta e pavimento basso funziona benissimo, fino al momento in cui ti serve davvero.

Se il viaggio dipende da videochiamate o hotspot, pianifica sul dato delle ore di punta e non su quello tipico.

Cosa succede in Stati Uniti quando la rete è congestionata

La congestione non è un guasto, è un martedì sera. La domanda è cosa può farci la tua eSIM, e per quasi tutte le eSIM da viaggio la risposta è niente: un accordo all'ingrosso per paese, una rete, e nessuna via d'uscita se non comprare una seconda eSIM da qualcun altro mentre sei in mezzo alla strada.

Qui il traffico Orbislo passa da T-Mobile e AT&T. Quando la rete su cui sei peggiora ti spostiamo su un'altra, a metà viaggio, senza che tu lo chieda, e te lo diciamo dopo invece di interromperti sul momento.

Stati Uniti: operatori mobili

• Verizon: Verizon reported 144.75 million postpaid and prepaid connections at the end of 2023, 38.6 percent of the total for the largest publicly traded carriers and the largest share among them in the FCC's 2024 marketplace report.
• T-Mobile: T-Mobile reported 119.7 million postpaid and prepaid connections at the end of 2023, a 31.9 percent share among the largest carriers, up from 102.06 million at the end of 2020.
• AT&T: AT&T reported 106.34 million postpaid and prepaid connections at the end of 2023, a 28.3 percent share among the largest carriers, and separately about 135 million connected device and wholesale connections.
• UScellular: T-Mobile closed its purchase of UScellular's wireless operations on 1 August 2025, taking over more than four million customers, its stores and selected spectrum. The towers and a significant portion of the spectrum stayed with the renamed Array Digital Infrastructure.
• EchoStar and Boost Mobile: In May 2026 the FCC approved the assignment of EchoStar's 600 MHz and 3.45 GHz licences to AT&T. Boost Mobile continues as what the companies call a hybrid network operator, running its own 5G core while carrying customer traffic over AT&T's cell sites.

Stati Uniti: reti più vecchie

• The national carriers retired 3G during 2022: AT&T began phasing it out in February, T-Mobile finished Sprint's CDMA network on 31 March and its own UMTS network on 1 July, and Verizon set 31 December as its completion date. The FCC warned that visitors arriving with 3G phones would be affected.
• After Verizon retired its CDMA network, a phone that only supports 3G, or a 4G phone without HD Voice (VoLTE), can no longer make or receive calls, send texts or use data on Verizon, and such devices cannot be activated.
• T-Mobile retired its 2G GSM network on 3 August 2026. It also shut Sprint's LTE network on 30 June 2022 and retired an older network security standard on 1 April 2026, which can disrupt some features on phones from 2017 or earlier.

Stati Uniti: il 5G

• The FCC's C-band auction of the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz band, Auction 107, closed in February 2021 with 81.17 billion dollars in gross bids, and 21 bidders won a total of 5,684 licences.
• Auction 110 for the 3.45 GHz band ran from October 2021 to January 2022 and raised 22.51 billion dollars in gross bids from 23 winning bidders, making further mid band spectrum available for 5G.
• Auction 108 for 2.5 GHz band licences ran in July and August 2022 and raised 427.8 million dollars in gross bids from 63 winning bidders.
• T-Mobile launched the first nationwide standalone 5G network on 4 August 2020. Standalone mode freed its 600 MHz 5G signal from depending on mid band 4G, letting it reach further from each tower and deeper into buildings.
• The spectrum AT&T bought from EchoStar covers about 99 percent of the US population. The FCC waived the standard 600 MHz build out schedule on condition that AT&T meets tighter deadlines than it had proposed.

Stati Uniti: note sulla rete

• No US network covers the whole country. Each national carrier reports 4G LTE coverage of at least 95 percent of the population but only at least 68 percent of road miles, and 5G at 7/1 Mbps or better for at least 75 percent of people and 35 percent of road miles.
• AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon together held about 82 percent of the mobile spectrum the FCC counts in its competition screen as of June 2024, measured by megahertz weighted by population covered.
• Numbering data put US mobile connections at about 492 million at the end of 2023, an increase of about 5 percent on the end of 2022.