For three months earlier this year, I put Verizon and AT&T’s 5G Home Internet to the test. There was one clear winner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, let me say that I am in a fortunate enough position to be able to test the two services head-to-head on what I consider to be equal footing. I am roughly the same distance (but in different directions) to both a Verizon 5G tower, and a brand new AT&T tower (constructed in 2025). The AT&T tower is clearly visible out of the second-floor window where both modems were placed during testing, while the Verizon tower is far off center (75 degrees east). Both towers are approximately 500-600 feet away from my house with no obstructions between the tower and my window. Ideal conditions for 5G Home Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Verizon 5G modem was replaced in June of 2025, so is relatively recently hardware. The AT&T modem was acquired in April of 2026 from them. Both were connected via ethernet when being tested from a desktop computer, and Wi-Fi when tested from a phone or laptop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my market (Las Vegas, NV), Verizon owns 160MHz of C-Band spectrum, and AT&T owns a total of 150MHz of spectrum: 70MHz of 3.45GHz (including Dish’s spectrum it leased at the time and was in the process of acquiring) along with 80MHz of C-Band spectrum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Verizon advertises the service as having speeds of up to 300Mbps down and 20Mbps up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AT&T advertising the service as having speeds of 300Mbps down and 30Mbps up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both providers do not have broadband caps, so there is no monthly transfer limit or overages. However the carriers can throttle or deprioritize your traffic if needed during peak times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Verizon performance matched their stated performance benchmarks the vast majority of the time I was using the service. I would regularly see speed tests at or slightly in excess of 300Mbps down and 20Mbps up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Verizon also noticeably rate limits their 5G Home internet – on my iPhone I can get 5G speeds over 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) down. However in the exact same spot a minute later the fastest the 5G Home internet will go is slightly over 300Mbps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AT&T had a more difficult time living up to their stated performance goals, especially for download speeds. Speeds typically ranged between 180-220Mbps down, lower than the 300 estimated in their Broadband Facts sticker. However upstream was very reliable – 25-40Mbps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AT&T’s speeds were also inconsistent. When I first got the modem, the speeds were very strong – ranging from 300-500Mbps, occasionally even faster than that. However after a few weeks they started slowing down, and two months into testing I rarely saw any download speeds above 250Mbps. I attribute this to increased network load as AT&T is putting more Internet Air customers on the network. In July 2026 they announced that they doubled their subscriber count from 1 million to 2 million Air customers in about 12 months, twice as fast as they went from 0 to 1 million customers (24 months). There was also a door-to-door salesman in the neighborhood for AT&T Internet Air and Phone service when the new tower was activated. The tower and my modem were both brand new so I don’t think it was equipment at either end. Modem reboots and changing what few settings I could did not solve the problem of slowing speeds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AT&T’s price for their internet offering is relatively straightforward (as much as they can be these days). The price is starts at $65\/mo, but drops to $55\/mo<\/strong> including an auto-pay discount. It goes down to $35\/mo<\/strong> with a qualifying AT&T mobile phone plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Verizon’s pricing is more complex. It used to be as simple as AT&T’s when I signed up in 2022 – $25\/mo if you have a Verizon mobile phone plan and sign up for auto-pay. Now, there are three tiers of varying speeds which vary in price depending on auto-pay and if you have a qualifying Verizon Wireless service. It might just be easier to show this in a table…<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of August 2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On a dollar-for-dollar basis AT&T is the cheaper plan for the promised speeds. But the better deal comes down to who has the better signal and network capacity at your house. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I am asked about who has the best mobile phone network is in 2026, I typically respond with “whoever has the best signal where you live and work.” That advice stands strong with 5G Home internet – if you get great signal in your area with your current mobile phone service you might want to take a look at their 5G Home internet. While the speeds aren’t as fast as cable or fiber, I’ve never had a problem with the throughput in the more than four years working from home with Verizon’s 5G. I’d switch to fiber if I had the chance, but since it isn’t available at my house. My only other high speed option is cable at $125\/mo for gigabit speeds that have a 1.25TB\/mo transfer cap, I’ll stick with much cheaper 5G Home Internet with no monthly data bandwidth caps or overages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Final Note<\/em>: I would have loved to also included T-Mobile 5G home internet in this comparison as well, especially since their tower is right next to Verizon’s tower about 600′ from my house. Unfortunately I was not able to sign up as there is a waiting list in my neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For three months earlier this year, I put Verizon and AT&T’s 5G Home Internet to the test. There was one clear winner. Background & Setup First, let me say that I am in a fortunate enough position to be able to test the two services head-to-head on what I consider to be equal footing. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phnegC-9T","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forward-path.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Verizon Plan<\/strong><\/td> Price
(Stand Alone)<\/strong><\/td>Price
(with VZ service)<\/strong><\/td>Download\/ Upload Speeds<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> 5G Home <\/td> $50\/mo<\/td> $35\/mo<\/td> 100Mbps \/ 10Mbps<\/td><\/tr> 5G Home Pro<\/td> $60\/mo<\/td> $45\/mo<\/td> 150Mbps \/ 15Mbps<\/td><\/tr> 5G Home Ultimate<\/td> $75\/mo<\/td> $60\/mo<\/td> 300Mbps \/ 20Mbps<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n