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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.
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!"
Million board support packages.
Odd unit... And not particularly practical. Really, how many mobile users have a vxWorks license and are downloading BSPs on the go?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Mablespoons. It's a measurement of data in liquid form.
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
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.
Quantum communications -- you're aware of all thoughts simultaneously as they occur. Actually sharing them is no longer necessary.
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.
They sent in teams last year to both cities, but they quickly went insane from having to listen to all the hippies telling them about their damn urban chicken coops. Several of them never really recovered (one still pisses himself when he hears the word "composting"). They felt it was just safer for everyone to just forgo them this year.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I thought it was million binary-spaced partitions.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
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.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
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.
This is an interesting analysis of why the speeds are different, but I'm not quite sure that it makes a terrific difference. Unless Sprint makes some effort to expand their capacity, or it is expected that Verizon will use up their capacity in the next year or so, I don't really why Verizon is faster than Sprint; I just care that it is faster.
Do we have reason to believe that Verizon will use up their capacity? I admit that I am less familiar with their growth trends than you seem to be. If so, that certainly is an important consideration to take into account when deciding upon a carrier.
I also like how Minneapolis/St Paul was left out when it's a bigger metro area than Oklahoma City and Nashville combined.
"Mbsp"? Seriously? Is that like a really big tablespoon (tbsp) of data going through the tubes?
FFS, editors: learn to read.
I think one could make assumptions about it and try and justify.
If Verizon just did a build out, and is unlikely to make huge capital investments for the foreseeable future, it will go down, perhaps Sprint is at equilibrium, or ready to upgrade again.
I think it is unlikely Verizon will grow capacity as fast as customers, causing them to slowly drop, and when AT&T merges with T-Mobile, I imagine TMO is gonna get worse.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Theoretically, on a completely empty highway I can achieve speeds in excess of 200mph in a sufficiently powerful car. In practice, most highways will be congested, police officers will be present, the weather may be bad, etc., and I will never be able to go above an average of 60 (in rush hours of many cities, even less). To that effect my compact car is all I really need, and I am more interested in routes to and from work that will avoid congested areas instead of freeways that offer a theoretically higher speed.
Likewise, this article isn't about raw speed, it's about what is practically possible. This is an excellent guide for those interested in data plans.
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
Man, I don't know what you're talking about. Chickens make for delicious pets! As a bonus, you can compost the leftovers. Really.
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...
I don't think that's the real story. Disclaimer: I used to work for Clearwire.
Clearwire, which is Sprint's 4G provider, is providing WiMAX at about 2.5ghz, whereas Verizon, AT&T and other 3G providers are providing their 3G at much lower frequencies.
Sure, higher frequencies do mean that there are higher theoretical limits to bandwidth, you also need more power to penetrate farther and provide the available actual bandwidth at higher frequencies. I don't know whether or not Clearwire is transmitting at higher wattages than current 3G providers. However my guess is, no; this wasn't my part of the business anyway and even if it was, I don't know jack about 3G transmission.
Currently, VZW is running LTE at 700mHz, hence it's faster, and has better penetration.
If WiMAX ran at 700mHz, the shooting match would be much closer.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Is that like Megaspoons?
--Matthew
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.
I know. It's a pity. We just couldn't make it that far this year based on how we had to plot out the drives.
I'm Sascha Segan. Who are you?
It's mega-brandy-spoonfuls. Trust me, if you organized this project, you'd be drinking too. (NOTE TO EDITORS: THAT IS A JOKE, I WAS NOT DRINKING)
I'm Sascha Segan. Who are you?
Yes, Clear/Clearwire (who is partially owned by Sprint) runs a WiMAX network. All of Sprint's 4G is this Clear/Sprint co-ran WiMAX network. Also, it's probably worth noting that Clear tries to sell their WiMAX as "another home broadband" for use with home desktop PCs, as well as a mobile broadband network.
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?