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Eight Major 3G & 4G Networks Tested Nationwide
adeelarshad82 writes "Building on last year's efforts, PCMag once again hit the road on a 6,000 mile trip to test out eight 3G and 4G networks to determine which ones were the fastest (and slowest) in 21 different cities. With 10 stops in each city for at least 15 minutes each, the team used custom speed test software on 16 different handsets which ran HTTP upload and download tests every 25 seconds to 3 minutes. The test results were broken down by city as well as region. As expected, Verizon's 4G led the pack. It performed the best in Dallas, where it averaged 15.75 Mbsp and also hit the highest download speed of 37.66 Mbsp. On the other hand, Sprint's 4G results were disappointing; in some cities even AT&T provided better download speeds. Beyond the 4G, T-Mobile's HSPA+ offered blazing fast speeds as well, going as high up as 15.93 Mbsp in Detroit while averaging the best in Dallas at 6.44 Mbps. Amongst the 3G networks, AT&T mostly outperformed all others."
otherwise this would be first post
were mind-blowing the first time I used it. I honestly couldn't believe I was using a mobile data connection.
I thought it was a typo for Mbps, but it's repeated over and over... What does this new acronym mean?
You are ignorant, and consistently so.
What, no Portland or Seattle?
Breaking News: Next Gen 4G LTE tech blows away older techs. Surprise!
We will now proceed to the obligatory 579 posts as follows -
...followed by anecdotes about cell coverage, speed and pricing in Korea.
"This is bunk. In [Insert City], [carrier A] sucks donkey balls. [Carrier B] is much better!"
"Are you joking? [Carrier B] STINKS here in [City C]. I love [Carrier A]! "
"I wish I could just buy a phone that makes calls!"
It's short for "maybespoon"
In DC I normally get around 6 Mbps down and 2 up on Sprint 4g, but I pay $53 a month. I'm pretty happy with that.
33kbps at most on AT&T: watching simple web pages load on an iphone is painful and reminiscent of dialup days
It's too bad they're branding 4G as something that isn't truly 4G. What are they going to call 4G when it really comes out?? 4G+? 4.5G? Slippery slope.
I made an app! Shoutium
Beyond the 4G, T-Mobile's HSPA+ offered blazing fast speeds as well, going as high up as 15.93 Mbsp in Detroit
Of course the downside is - you have to live in Detroit.
#DeleteChrome
Outdated troll is outdated:
http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/48.aspx
The testing shows that Verizon has a lot of capacity & not enough users. Either due to lack of mobile devices that support 4G or consumers not liking the expensive rates for data usage.
Sprint has had 4G out awhile & has many more users without fear of expensive bills so users are taking full advantage of the rates. Net effect is lower available bandwidth for users.
Yeah. The FCC should step up and charge the carriers with false advertising. Although their rebuttal would probably be something along the lines of "We aren't saying it's 4G. We are saying it's 4G LTE."
When Verizon markets their network as "4G", I expect it to blow away other 3G networks. It's good that it does, and it's also good for PCMag to verify that it does. As a counterexample, Sprint's 4G network wasn't really much faster than AT&T's 3G network.
I'm quite sure you can achieve something like this.
If you're standing 2 feet from your cell tower.
These new standards like LTE are much, MUCH faster than existing 3G standards. So it makes sense for them to be called something new for marketing sake and for consumer understanding. However ITU-T decided that to be "4G" you had to be much faster than could currently be done.
Well the companies decided to just ignore that, and call the current stuff 4G and I don't blame them at all. I mean with LTE on Verizion you are talking a new frequency band, new encoding, much faster speeds, and you don't want to call that a new generation of wireless?
Standards organizations need to be reasonable with what can be met. Nobody is saying that the current wireless technologies are where we should stop but they are what we can deliver NOW and they are a big step up. Targets shouldn't be set so far advanced. Set that for 5G, or whatever.
Mbsp? ... maybe Mbps...
yeah...
And yet somehow you managed to figure it out anyway. Will wonders never cease?
Did you not read the sub-heading (right under the title of the article?) "PCMag hit the road to test eight 3G and 4G networks in 21 U.S. cities"
10 times what wired speed?
I have 10Gbps gear here at work, and even at the house 1Gbps. My FIOS connection is 25/25 and if I was willing to pay would go up to 150/150.
You sir, are far behind the times.
A single 3G/4G modem is not a very good test of throughput speeds because numerous other factors such as phone usage, subscribers in the area, and the not level painting of signals all contribute to the results. As long as there's a connection and a basic returning of a web page most customers will be happy. I wonder if the exact count of bits would be good enough to generate random numbers?
Only old people are still talking about coverage, speed, and pricing in Korea.
I find it odd that they did a little of Southern California and Nevada and called that all Rural West. Seems like they missed a big portion of the west coast. including Silicon Forest.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
It's interesting that Verizon seems to have broad 4G coverage, because AT&T's 4G speed (where available) has been found to be much faster than Verizon's. Relatively few people care about 4G speed right now, because relatively few have 4G devices. When 4G devices become more ubiquitous, then we should all care which service provider offers the highest speed in the most places. Only the few folks who live on the bleeding edge of battery life care about 4G now. For the vast majority of users, it's still the 3G speed that matters.
Fun fact: In classical rhetoric, "Slippery Slope" is a logical fallacy; it's invocation usually signifies an inability to create a logically convincing chain of events that would lead to the referenced disastrous outcome. In modern form, "slippery slopes" can be logically valid, if a logically consistent (and probable) chain of events is constructed; however, this is rarely satisfactorily performed.
I guess we can let you off the hook, though. I don't think you even proposed an actual slippery slope; you merely alluded to the possibility of one being there, and left it up to the reader to guess the trigger, chain of events, and logical conclusion.
I don't even disagree with your core sentiment; I think it is a shame that companies are allowed to use the label "4G" when describing technologies that don't actually comply with the 4G standard. (The reason for this, if I recall correctly, is that they began advertising under that label before the standard was proposed.) However, I would like to see the Slashdot community hold itself to higher standards in these comment threads, and I believe that involves pointing out logical flaws even in points that I fundamentally agree with.
That doesn't seem to bad, then?
Here in Europe, there are still a lot of places with GPRS-only coverage, with an average.
Comcast (albeit their cheapest plan available) here in Houston gives me 1.41 mbps down and 0.36 mbps up lol sad when mobile internet is faster than my home one.
There is an app for tha... Oh wait... hmmm... This can't be right... No their isn't. They only have an app for Android. I wonder if this is because they just haven't created the app for iPhone or Apple would not allow the app to be on the apple app store.
"Mbsp"? Seriously? Is that like a really big tablespoon (tbsp) of data going through the tubes?
FFS, editors: learn to read.
... or just a ranking of who paid the most to PCMag for positive reviews? PCMag is not exactly known for an unbiased, scientific approach.
Geez, guys. The whole POINT of wireless is that you can use it anywhere, rather than tethered to a personal access point.
Yet the wireless companies, during the upgrades from analog to digital and voice to voice-plus-data, have abandoned the space between the cities in favor of serving only the concentrated populations wandering around in urban areas. You aren't limited to your hardwired tether. But you ARE tethered to your "coverage area". And even within that, some areas are drastically degraded compared to others.
How about some testing of service ON THE ROAD and otherwise out in the boonies, rather than going cross-country yet measuring only in one big city after another.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm talking about consumers not businesses.
You represent 1% of the nation? I just checked my area and the MAX(FIOS) is 150d/35u which is STILL 6 times slower then what they claim they want for 4G wireless. And I can't even get FIOS, only Comcast which only offers 105d/10u which by a weird coincidence is about 10 times less then the 4G standard... so it seems maybe more likely that your just blowing smoke...
Is that like Megaspoons?
--Matthew
Just checking, am one of those beings that lives not in the US. That's right, we do exist.
It seems a bit weird that they didn't bother standardizing the tests using USB dongles. They are provided by all carriers, more insulated against hardware design differences, and take advantage of the fastest network speeds from all the carriers. I was especially turned off when I saw the T-mobile device only used their 21Mbps network and not their 42Mbps network. It seems like a "Oh... the thunderbolt was released...quickly do a test for HANDHELDS ONLY so we can get some awesome numbers before we would have to include more comparable technologies."
I'm talking about consumers not businesses.
You represent 1% of the nation? I just checked my area and the MAX(FIOS) is 150d/35u which is STILL 6 times slower then what they claim they want for 4G wireless. And I can't even get FIOS, only Comcast which only offers 105d/10u which by a weird coincidence is about 10 times less then the 4G standard... so it seems maybe more likely that your just blowing smoke...
Yeah umm they're not going to OFFER actual speeds of 1000/150Mbps, that's just what they want the technologies to be capable of. The highest speed I can get on Comcast around here is 50down/15up (or thereabouts) but that doesn't mean that's the highest speed DOCSIS supports.
We have more than 2 Major networks!
Broken link is broken
Sprint really screwed themselves over with WiMAX. It has no indoor coverage, at all, anywhere I've tried in San Francisco. This is because WiMAX's frequency range doesn't really penetrate buildings; it's not just a problem in SF.
Nobody cares about download speeds. Same goes for prices. And customer service. The sheep will camp out for the privilege of signing bloated contracts as long as they get a shiny new iPhone though.
But what the hell do I know, I am just a bitter T-Mobile employee (for a few more months anyway). I will always be disappointed in my fellow Americans for shunning a great company with the best customer service, very competitive pricing, decent handset lineup, and the pioneers of the Android OS. But we don't sell the iPhone and that is all that fucking matters anymore.
Let me know how that duopoly works out for you, assholes!
Does any carrier offer WiMax service?
Are faster, in case you're interested.
http://mrdns.com/ns/att.com
Nameserver ns3.attdns.com ns3.attdns.com 144.160.20.47
Nameserver ns1.attdns.com ns1.attdns.com 144.160.112.22
Nameserver ns4.attdns.com ns4.attdns.com 144.160.229.11
Nameserver ns2.attdns.com ns2.attdns.com 144.160.128.140
FTA:
So we sent six drivers on a cross-country road trip in Ford cars with lots of mobile phones and custom software designed by network testing firm Sensorly to see just how fast these 4G Internet connections really are.
Because Fords obviously affect our data rate? Or is product placement so rampet in today's society, that we name-drop in a tech article that is not even remotely related to cars?