Six years after swallowing Sprint, T-Mobile stands at the pinnacle of U.S. wireless. Back in 2018, the companies pitched a merger that would blanket 99% of Americans in 5G coverage by 2026, with speeds over 100 Mbps hitting 90% of the population. Rural spots would get 50 Mbps averages. Skeptics scoffed. Regulators demanded proof. Today, those targets look modest. T-Mobile’s 5G Advanced network now reaches 98% of the country, topping charts in speed and reliability. Download experiences clock 184.7 Mbps nationally, per Opensignal’s January 2026 report—a whopping 110 Mbps ahead of AT&T. Opensignal . But numbers alone don’t tell it. Customers feel the shift. J.D. Power crowned T-Mobile number one for network quality in five of six regions this year, unseating rivals after 35 straight studies. Ookla’s Speedtest gave it best mobile network honors, back-to-back on hundreds of millions of data points. Switchers now pick T-Mobile as top network more than twice as often as in 2020—one in four versus one in eight.…