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AT&T Wins Gizmodo 3G Bandwidth Test

Posted by timothy on from the avoid-the-mountains dept.

ink writes "Gizmodo has completed a 12-city test of 3G cellular bandwidth speed. Verizon won four of the twelve, however AT&T scored higher with six: 'Let's get this straight right away: We didn't test dropped voice calls, we didn't test customer service, and we didn't test map coverage by wandering around in the boonies. We tested the ability of the networks to deliver 3G data in and around cities, including both concrete canyons and picket-fenced 'burbs. And while every 3G network gave us troubles on occasion, AT&T's wasn't measurably more or less reliable than Verizon's.'"

6 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. What about sustained transfers? by gad_zuki! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find I can get a nice burst for the first couple of megabytes then Im throttled pretty badly. Id like to know which carrier doesnt do this. It doesnt look related to reception.

    1. Re:What about sustained transfers? by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I find I can get a nice burst for the first couple of megabytes then Im throttled pretty badly. Id like to know which carrier doesnt do this. It doesnt look related to reception.

      Short answer: it seems that all US carriers do this, either because (i) they underestimated demand and under-invested in infrastructure, or (ii) because they can maximize their revenues while minimizing their costs, and the customers are trapped into long term contracts.
      This sort of throttling by carriers is unheard-of in more advanced countries, such as Finland or Sweden. None of the carriers do that here; if they tried it, they'd have no customers left within a month or two (terminating a contract is trivial, and does not entail penalties). There are no usage caps on 3G either - unlimited actually does mean unlimited.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    2. Re:What about sustained transfers? by yoyhed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Also, try going to Gizmodo without Adblock on. Note ALL the AT&T "Better 3G Experience" ads - especially the one with fucking Luke Wilson that is masquerading as an ACTUAL FUCKING STORY. Yeah, I'm sure this is a completely unbiased test. And 3G is not slow for me, on Verizon I get sustained 150 kiloBYTE/s downloads. That was my cable internet speed a few years ago, but now I have it on my phone!

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
  2. Re:Piss off, 3G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    we just got clearwire wimax here in austin tx... city wide broadband, no 3g required, operating off of the fore-mentioned spectrums you spoke of.. maybe you should write your congressman and tell them to work to get wimax in your city

  3. Re:Look at the latency by ircmaxell · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd be curious to see the results of a test conducted as follows:

    Setup a test rig that automatically tests download speed and latency from a few different servers (globally dispersed) every 30 seconds. Have it geotag each result.

    Drive around each of the cities (and metro area surrounding them), and gather the data over a few days for each city.

    Then, compute a few different metrics. First, for each carrier, generate a heat map of download speeds (It would wind up looking something like Verizon's 3g Map, but with different colors denoting speed ranges). If there are multiple readings in a given area (Say 100m^2), average them.

    Second, figure out the peak speed, minimum speed, average speed (Both mean and RMS) as well as the standard deviation for each carrier.

    There's so much focus on peak speed these days (well, at least that's what gets the press), that I think people forget that what matters is the average experience. It's like with stereo amplifiers: Peak wattage tells you nothing about overall power output, RMS wattage (Root Mean Square) tells you about power output...

    Just my idea. Feel free to steal or rip it to shreds...

    --
    If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
  4. Because they didn't use the iPhone by TroyM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A big part of AT&T's problem is really that the iPhone's radio sucks. When tests are done using a different device, AT&T scores pretty good. I switched from AT&T (not the iPhone) to Verizon, and I don't see any improvement in call quality.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13digi.html?_r=4&ref=technology