The chart that T-Mobile is using as evidence seems wrong. The chart shows that 23% of the time, speeds are below 10Mbps in metro areas (MSAs). It also shows median speeds above 20Mbps less than 10% of the time and median speeds above 25Mbps basically 0% of the time. So which is it? Do T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T all hit 24.3Mbps to 25.6Mbps median speeds or do carriers almost never hit median speeds above 20Mbps?

It seems like T-Mobile will re-interpret Ookla speedtests however it wants. It looks like the issue might be that they're using data from more than a year ago - starting in January 2016. It's totally believable that starting in January 2016, you could clear a 20Mbps median only 10% of the time.

It's an egregiously misleading chart. Only data from 2017 should be considered - unless T-Mobile wants to start advertising its speeds and coverage from over a year ago.

Sometimes T-Mobile is very disappointing. I was wondering if part of it was because the timing would mean they'd have to rely on 700MHz LTE where they'd only have 5MHz for the downlink - which might present problems with hitting a 10Mbps median. But the timing seems far enough out (2021 for 40% coverage) that 600MHz should all be available then. The FCC information does seem to indicate that the grant is specifically for 4G LTE, not just 10Mbps service. It's possible that T-Mobile doesn't want to dedicate that much of their 600MHz spectrum to LTE. It's also possible that T-Mobile wants to expand their mapped coverage on the government's dime without actually providing good service to the new areas.

I'd love to see the FCC request data from T-Mobile to create that chart for 2017 data using only T-Mobile speed tests. Either they'd have to show that their network is slow or that there isn't a problem hitting 10Mbps.