Consumer Cellular has held the top spot in Market Force Information's wireless brand ranking for a third consecutive report, leading the field on overall brand performance and on the research firm's Customer Loyalty Index, with Cricket also near the front.
The 2026 Wireless Benchmark Study is based on fieldwork with 1,647 US consumers and is the third wave of the programme, following data gathered in 2023 and 2025. It measures provider experience alongside brand image, churn behaviour, device satisfaction and demographic trends.
Two pricing models, two scorecards
Average monthly bills show how far apart the retail positions have become. Verizon subscribers report paying $160.04 a month, while TracFone customers pay $25.00. National networks price on network ownership and subscriber scale; value brands compete almost entirely on the headline monthly figure.
Brand performance scores reflect that split. Consumer Cellular recorded 72.3 percent, more than double AT&T's 34.2 percent.
Loyalty readings follow the same pattern. AT&T's Customer Loyalty Index score of 3.90 and Verizon's 3.96 both sit below the 25th-percentile mark of 4.08, placing the two largest incumbents at the bottom of the ranking.
Price drives intent to switch
Almost one in five customers — 19 percent — say they are actively weighing a move to another provider. Cost of service ranks as the leading stated reason for a third year running, cited by 12 percent of respondents, with deal-seeking named by 10.3 percent.
Network quality has not vanished from the decision. Data speed at 8.5 percent and call clarity at 7 percent complete the top four, suggesting engineering still shifts choices as coverage differences between operators narrow.
Behaviour among customers who have already left is sharper. Among former T-Mobile subscribers, 76.6 percent cite monthly service cost as their reason for going — a price-led churn pattern. The survey frames this as pressure on bills rather than an immediate rush for the exits: most switching recirculates among the three national carriers, and long tenure keeps accounts in place well after satisfaction begins to erode.
Sherri Weed, COO at Market Force Information, described a structural disconnect between market dominance and customer satisfaction, noting that the carriers with the largest subscriber bases are not delivering the experiences that create loyalty. She characterised the gap as a business risk rather than only a customer-experience problem, and said the data makes the pattern clear over time.
Service issues ease, hardware ranking shifts
Service problems have eased across the industry, falling from 30 percent of customers in 2023 to 22 percent in the latest wave. Roughly a fifth of the base still runs into an issue, with the residue landing on support teams and field engineering rather than on the tariff sheet.
Hardware rankings moved as well. Samsung finished ahead of iPhone in the study's Brand Competitiveness Ranking for the first time in its history.