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Minneapolis tops the US charts in 4G speed

If having a fast 4G connection is your thing, you might want to pick the Mall of America over the a casino on the Las Vegas Strip for your next weekend getaway. Minneapolis is the fastest major city in America when it comes to LTE, according to OpenSignal data.

We parsed overall 4G speeds in 35 major metropoles in the U.S. between July and September and found there was a big gap between the fastest and slowest cities in our tests. The average 4G download connection in Minneapolis was 21.5 Mbps, which was almost twice as fast as the 11.65 Mbps average we measured in Las Vegas, the slowest among our 35 cities.

In fact, the Midwest performed quite admirably in our urban speed tests -- perhaps to make up for its horrible winters. Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis joined Minneapolis at the apex of our chart. The only non-Midwestern city to make the top 5 was Seattle.

Overall, U.S. cities performed well when compared to national averages. In OpenSignal's State of LTE report released earlier this month, we measured a national 4G download average of 13.98 Mbps. That means 29 of the 35 cities in our chart exceeded that benchmark. When compared to global speeds, though, the majority of U.S. cities found themselves lacking. Only 14 cities had 4G speeds higher than worldwide LTE download average of 16.6 Mbps. And apart from Minneapolis only one other city averaged connections faster than 20 Mbps: Detroit.

If you're curious how individual U.S. operators performed in these cities, check out our last State of Mobile Networks: USA report, which provides an operator-by-operator breakdown of 4G speeds and availability in more than 30 markets. If you're a U.S. 4G user, let us know how fast speeds are in your city. You can measure them for yourself by downloading either the OpenSignal or Meteor app and report your experiences in the comments section below.