T-Mobile continues to push fake 4G branding. You would have though by now after T-Mobile has been branding its 3.5G technology as 4G someone or something would have been done by law makers to stop this nonsense, but the company continues to push the fake 4G branding and still calling it America’s largest 4G network.
Now T-Mobile isn’t the only company to fudge the 4G branding, AT&T was doing it for a while too, but they did actually bring out real 4G LTE, so they are under the radar for now. Customers of T-Mobile are often unaware the service isn’t 4G at all, and may never realize it isn’t. The problem isn’t the actual speed achieved on the fake 4G network; it's the fact they continue to use this branding.
As far as T-Mobile HSPA 3G and 3.5G HSPA+ speeds goes; network speed is good, and has some of the best coverage in the country. So what is real 4G? Well, you will be able to spot a real 4G network because it will be advertised as 4G LTE.
4G LTE is the newest standard for cellular data speeds. Many countries enjoy 4G LTE data speed that hit around 60mbit/s but unfortunately, the 4G LTE networks in the US are still growing and restricted to more metropolitan areas, and do not offer these speeds as yet due to demand and network resources. Maybe by the time T-Mobile actually gets real a 4G LTE network, they will claim it is America’s biggest 5G network.