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Six Major 3G and 4G Networks Tested Nationwide
adeelarshad82 writes "PCMag recently tested six 3G and 4G networks to determine which ones were the fastest (and slowest) in 18 different US cities. They focused on data, not calls, and used their own testing script and methodology, which combined various kinds of uploads and downloads. Using laptops, more than a dozen people ran more than 10,000 tests; they found AT&T is both the fastest national 3G network, and the least consistent. Sprint's 3G system was the slowest of the 'big four' carriers, but the most consistent. When the test results were broken down by regions, AT&T led on speed in the Southeast, Central, and West, but T-Mobile took the crown in the Northeast region. Sprint's 4G network was fast where it was available, but it was surprisingly slower than 3G in some cities. The fastest AT&T download seen, at 5.05 megabits/sec, was right behind Apple's headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, CA. The fastest connection in any of the tests was a blazing 9.11 megabits down on Sprint 4G in the Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta, GA. The slowest city, on average, was Raleigh, with average 3G downloads of 880kbits/sec."
I'm surprised at not seeing Verizon mentioned in the summary, as I've heard pretty much everywhere that they have the best network. Perhaps Verizon focuses more on phone service than data?
My other sig is clever.
It runs my home network, and I am very satisfied with it. So much so, that the Spring 4G EVO looks very attractive as an iPhone alternative. Too bad my contract runs out in December, and ATT jacked up surrender fees.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Assholes are running around the country with laptops trying to see how much bandwidth they can eat up for testing purposes.
in NYC and i have an iphone 3GS and a sprint blackberry. speedtests on the iphone average around 600 - 3500kbps download. even in midtown manhattan. depends on the exact location and time of day. and response is pretty good. the Sprint BB is like watching trees grow. Google maps is slow. and there are tons of deadspots around NYC. only time it's better is in one of the old factory buildings on the west side. last year when AT&T had problems i would listen to pandora and slacker on my BB.
with iphone OS 4 coming out next week i would throw the blackberry in the trash if it didn't belong to my employer
How about for a laptop "aircard" or such? Or a tablet.
Not a sentence!
The problem with AT&T isn't speed, it's latency. I often had to wait ten seconds or more for a data request to be met, and often the software would timeout before that happened (which meant I would get no data at all). Once a download actually started, it was very fast, but so what?
By what standard does 3G mean "GSM Network"? None that I have ever heard of. 3G is a term used to describe a variety of technologies that meet certain requirements established by the ITU. Verizon's 3G technology is EVDO. Which is the same 3G technology that Sprint uses for 3G. So even if you were correct is saying that CDMA carriers aren't 3G, then why would the post reference Sprint's 3g network?
Wrong. All 3G (and beyond) is based on CDMA principles. In fact the 3G that ATT et al use is W-CDMA. There are differences in channel names and chipping rates and such. But at the end of the day anything beyond 2G is all based on CDMA.
"GSM" 2G is TMDA (time division) and just isn't adequate anymore.
LTE is an interesting beast. It uses CDMA but any user can get multiple channels (if available) at a time. The channel allocation is on a time interval.
"GSM" was dead after EDGE. If you are referring to the actual technology that was 2G GSM. However many people now use it interchangeably with UMTS/W-CDMA.. which causes lots of confusion.
Oh, and just to establish my credentials.. I'm a hardware engineer at a major cell phone chip company. I've built CDMA and UMTS base stations.
For what it's worth...
I was in Chicago for a couple of months at the beginning of the year. While there, I subscribed to Clear Internet (http://www.clear.com) - a 4G provider with (I think) Sprint backing it.
My results were absolutely horrible - on average, I was getting 51k download speeds. This was as measured on the modem itself (no router/firewall/PC - right from the status screen on the modem). There was nothing I could do to improve this and the people at Clear were completely baffled by this. According to the Clear folk, I was about 1/10 mile from the nearest tower. I was getting excellent signal and PSNR.
In my mind, either Clear was totally messed up or 4G has a lot more hype than delivery.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
1 megabits/s should be enough for everyone
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Kind of reminds me of:
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
(Bill Gates, 1981)
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
3G has come to mean "GSM network".
Bullshit. You can't just redefine terms because you don't understand what they mean.
For the painfully ignorant:
1G was analog voice
2G was digital voice
"2.5G" was an attempt to piggyback data onto voice channels
3G is purpose-build digital data.
EV-DO (verizon 3G) is definitely a dedicated data network, and definitely 3G (multi-megabit) caliber.
The way you use terms like "CDMA" and "GSM" makes them meaningless. GSM is a widespread, 2G, voice-only standard. HSDPA is not GSM. LTE is not GSM. CDMA is a channel control protocol that underlies lots of protocols, from IS-95 (2G voice) to HSDPA.
So the indirect conclusion is if you want a best balance of speed, consistency, coverage and price... in a major city, go T-Mobile. Especially when they get HSPA+ running.
Of course, T-mobile has had it's share of privacy problems or losing data (Sidekick incident).
Why am I not suprised this isn't a black spot for AT&T coverage. I bet they have a transmitter aimed directly at Steve Jobs' head.
How is this "Insightful"?
3G means "3rd generation" and 4G means "4th generation". It's that simple.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
In case anyone is confused on the proper designations, please refer to this chart. Just replace K's with M's.
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OFDM is based on CDMA. The point of CDMA is using orthogonal codes to separate users that are all in the same frequency space.
OFDM is an extension of this that offers more features, data throughput, etc. You can easily visualize LTE as many small CDMA channels where users get one or more of these channels during a time interval.
I doesn't much matter what happens outside the air interface, and it has no bearing on the rest of the network. Its all high speed backhaul anyway. You can plug in whatever you want.
Hell I can plug a Verizon femto cell into my Comcast connection and it becomes a small CDMA node. I hardly think you can call this an end to end technology that uses CDMA.
Those nice little names also come with real minimum performance requirements, so if something claiming to be, say, 4G, and it actually isn't 4G (like Sprint's offerings - just WiMAX), then that's an issue.