Ezee Fiber tops Ookla report as Houston’s fastest internet, beating Comcast and AT&T

Twice a year, the company behind the popular Speedtest tool — used to measure internet connection performance — reports on the state of mobile and fixed broadband services, naming winners at the national, state and even city levels. Usually, those in the top positions are familiar names — AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, Verizon, for example.

But for Ookla’s latest study on results from the second half of 2025, a small fiber company ranks as having the fastest fixed broadband service in the Houston area, beating out the two biggest players, Comcast and AT&T. It’s the second time that locally based Ezee Fiber has taken the crown — it also won Ookla’s first-half 2025 report. This says a lot about the changes roiling the U.S. internet market.

In fact, when you peruse the extensive United States Speedtest Connectivity Report — using data drawn from consumer use of the Speedtest app — you’ll find that, time and again, fiber internet providers are tops in the states’ and cities’ results, and it’s not always the big guys. Smaller players, often not encumbered by legacy services like cable and old-school broadband technologies, are able to offer faster speeds at competitive costs.

On the wireless front, T-Mobile continues to lead AT&T and Verizon nationally in most speed-related categories, but the other two are catching up. Mike Dano, an analyst with Ookla, said the addition of new radio spectrum has given all three telcos a 5G speed boost, and in particular has made AT&T a stronger contender.

“The more spectrum an operator has to deploy within their network, the faster their speeds are, the more network capacity they have,” Dano said. “In terms of AT&T, I think you're definitely seeing that.”

Mark Giles, also an Ookla analyst, said that in Houston, network improvements have got AT&T and Verizon “now neck and neck,” though T-Mobile remains the local winner in wireless.

Devil in the ISP details

The Connectivity Report is sorted primarily on median download speeds, but other factors are included for both fixed and wireless rankings: uploads, latency or lag and network consistency.

Here are some interesting tidbits from the report:

• In the states fixed internet rankings, Texas ranks fourth behind Florida, Connecticut and North Carolina in fastest median download speeds, with GFiber (originally known as Google Fiber) as the fastest provider in the Lone Star State.
• Texas lags on the wireless category, dropping in at 11th place, with Washington, Illinois and Utah taking the top three spots, respectively. T-Mobile is the fastest provider in Texas.
• Houston has a miserable showing in the fixed internet rankings for the country’s 100 most populous cities – 39th place – but other Texas cities dominate the top ten with six entries. San Antonio is No. 1, Austin is 5th, Corpus Christi is 6th, Garland is 8th, Fort Worth is 9th and Arlington is 10th. Perhaps Houston can take solace in the fact that Dallas did far worse, coming in at 97th, despite the fact that AT&T is headquartered there. Take that, Big D!
• Houston fares only slightly better on the mobile cities list, at 37th. The top Texas mobile city is San Antonio, but it comes in at 14th. Dallas appears at the 54th spot, but it has four other Texas cities ranked below it: Garland, El Paso, Arlington and Fort Worth.
• As mentioned, T-Mobile takes the national crown in mobile, scoring tops in eight different categories, with Verizon winning the best video streaming race. AT&T Fiber won most categories as best fixed internet provider, with Frontier Fiber (now owned by Verizon) the spoiler for gaming.

The domination by fiber providers in the Ookla report comes after several years of aggressive growth strategies by ISPs that sell the technology. In terms of speed and reliability, it has an edge over cable and most flavors of fixed wireless internet, which uses the same kind of 5G signals as mobile services. Fiber typically has upload speeds that match download speeds, whereas most other internet services have uploads that are a fraction of downloads.

In the Houston area, AT&T has been pushing fiber into neighborhoods both near the center of town as well as in the suburbs, where the established telco faces growing competition from smaller upstarts who focus on unserved areas as well as newer housing developments. That’s where companies like Ezee Fiber are seeing success, and Ookla’s Dano said consolidation of smaller fiber providers is starting to occur.

“On a nationwide perspective in the fiber market, we’re definitely seeing a roll-up of fiber providers right now,” he said. “Just in the past few weeks, Verizon has closed its acquisition of Frontier to expand its fiber reach.”

Indeed, Ezee last year acquired Tachus, another small fiber company operating in the Houston-area suburbs. It has also expanded into other markets outside Texas, including Washington state, Oregon, New Mexico and Illinois.

Everybody’s doing it

Even Comcast, whose Xfinity internet service typically rides into homes on the same copper wiring as cable television, is doing fiber. In March 2024, I wrote about the company’s plans to sell fiber to customers in Montgomery, Waller, Grimes and Liberty counties, and it’s not the only non-fiber provider moving in that direction.

For example, T-Mobile sells fiber service in 16 states, though in very limited markets. Last year it acquired Lumos Networks, which provides fiber services in the Southeast and Midwest United States. And Dano said T-Mobile fiber is now operating in some Texas cities, including Huntsville, San Angelo, Tyler and Wichita Falls.

Not to be outdone, AT&T on Feb. 2 acquired the fiber business of Lumen’s Mass Markets, which further expands its growing territory – it now sells fiber service in 32 states.

And then there’s bundling. Internet providers have had some success selling cellular phone service combined with home internet for discounts. Comcast offers Xfinity Mobile paired with its cable internet offerings, for example. And T-Mobile’s drive into fiber is helped along by bundling with its established cellular service.

Still, cable internet remains the dominant fixed-internet in the U.S., with only about 20 percent of homes subscribing to fiber. And that’s even though fiber is available to 60 percent of the U.S. market, according to a recent Fiber Broadband Association report. There’s still a long way to go.

Original article can be found at Houston Chronicle.