Atlanta Is The Most Mobile-Friendly City in the U.S.: Analysis

ATLANTA, GA -- Increasingly, we are a society that does its daily business via our smartphones and other mobile devices.

And, according to a new analysis, Atlanta is the best place in the United States to use that mobile technology.

Nerdwallet, a personal finance website, has released a report analyzing the 50 most populous cities in the U.S. to see which are the most mobile-friendly.

Atlanta, according to the analysis, is No. 1, topping cities like San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle and Chicago, which rounded out the top five.

Nerdwallet's report includes the cities where customers are most likely to get the best connection and in-person customer service. The 10 best cities also accommodate users with specially designed mobile websites.

They also examined carrier network performance, carrier network coverage, taxes and fees, and crime risk.

Of Atlanta, the report states:

"The city ranked near the top in all of our metrics — it was No. 2 in carrier network coverage among all 50 cities we measured, and third for customer service, with 8.40 mobile phone stores for every 10,000 residents. It also has the second-lowest wireless tax rate — federal, state and local taxes combined — of the top 10 cities."

Atlanta had the fastest upload and download speeds of any city in the analysis and boasts overall coverage that is 89 percent greater than the national average.

Nerdwallet reports that there are now some 377 million wireless subscriber connections in the U.S., according to CTIA-The Wireless Association. Because many people have multiple devices, that works out to about 56 million more connections than there are individual Americans.

More people are relying on cell phones as their main portal to the internet: 64% of U.S. adults own a smartphone and 10% have no other way of getting online, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey. And the Wireless Association notes that nearly half of U.S. households have wireless connections only.

The cities rounding out the top 10 on Nerdwallet's list are Houston, Long Beach, California, San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Austin, Texas.