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AT&T and Verizon LTE Networks Compared
adeelarshad82 writes "AT&T launched a speedy 4G LTE network in five cities on Sunday, and the question that comes to mind is how it compares to Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE system. Well, according to the eight rounds of testing conducted in Houston, Texas, Verizon may have something to worry about. Downloads over the AT&T network averaged about 24Mbps and peaked at 42.85Mbps, the fastest cellular connection seen to date. Just as interesting as the sheer download speeds were the connection quality results: Pingtest.net generally rated the network an A or a B, good enough for video chat or gaming."
How well does it perform when moving at 30mph and 60mph? So what if it works good an a stationary device on a network with very few users, that does not mean that it will work good with more users or while moving.
Verizon's network has been live for quite a while now and there's a decent number of customers actively using it. I would wager there wasn't many other AT&T customers sharing resources when these tests were conducted, but on Verizon's there was.
I'll be curious to see these tests repeated in six months, a year, etc.
(NOTE: not a Verizon fan... I'm with Sprint... just pointing out the obvious).
Am I the only person completely unexcited by 4G given the bandwidth limit to speed ratio?
On either Verizon or AT&T one can easily swallow up the entire 200/250MB lower tier limit in a matter of minutes. The 2GB higher end plan is a mere hours of airtime away. What happens when some rogue app or website pushes you well over the edge? Is this the texting overage nightmare ripe for abuse again? How the hell can you game on this kind of network with such low limits?
4G/LTE means nothing if the bandwidth limits are so paltry as to effectively make it a metered service.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Fiber == 1Gbps possible
Fixed wireless == 1Gbps possible, but very expensive
Cellular wireless with LTE Advanced == ~100Mbps possible
Cellular wireless with USA 4G == upto ~50Mbps possible
So NO, FTTH is not pointless
Just-activated network that only works with a handful of just-released devices is surprisingly fast and uncongested. Film at eleven.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It's also an uncongested network with a minimal number of connected devices at this time. Let's wait and see how it holds up under load -- that's been AT&T's weakness for a while now.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Maybe you are holding it wrong :-)
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Smithers fire the engineer that made this possible and the person who let it slip out.
The masses will be demanding this type of thing now and well be hard pressed to come up
with a plausible reason that we have to price it just out of their reach.
Agreed.
There is nobody on AT&T's network.
Its easy to be fast when your company currently offers virtually zero devices to run on its brand spanking new LTE network.
Give it a few months then the Movie streamers show up.
Then again, who can possibly use this speed when the current usage caps are so tight? Is it really that important to get
that email or that tweet that much faster? Forget movies, forget video-chat. No one can afford it with the tiers they have
set up.
Lets hope AT&T applies all $39 Billion bucks they will save by not being allowed to buy T-Mobile, adds in the $19 billion
already planned, and builds a first class LTE network that can actually carry the load.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
From the article:
Of course, we're comparing a loaded Verizon network full of Droid Bionics and HTC Thunderbolts to a brand-new AT&T system just out of the wrapping paper.
Fact is, AT&T has screwed up, without exception, every single aspect of my life they've managed to touch. I had their cable service for a little while when my former provider sold out to AT&T. Fortunately, I moved shortly after that. Their residential phone service is woefully expensive. Their cellular service cuts out consistently, and I can barely get a signal (which is an improvement that only happened in the last two years--before that, I was SOL trying to use my company-issued AT&T phone) where I work in downtown Atlanta. I had 1.5 Mbps DSL at my house, as they didn't have any speed faster than that, until I figured out one day that Comcast had 16 Mbps service for a lower price.
Right now, AT&T has exactly zero--zero--LTE smartphones on its network, so yeah, I don't doubt it's fast. I simply do not trust the network to hold up to a real-life data load, though, so no thanks.
I'm curious when AT&T is going to be rolling out 3G service. They claim to have it, but I ended up trading in my 3G capable phone because the service was almost non-existent. And I live in a major city. I found myself disabling it most of the time because it wouldn't be available and would take forever to drop down to edge.
Exactly. Assume the 250MB cap. At the 24Mbps quoted in TFS, that's 2 minutes.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's 1 minute 23 seconds.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&ie=UTF-8&q=250+MB+%2F+24+Mbps
This argument is always made anytime mention is made of metered Internet plans, whether wired or wireless. The argument is "since I can exhaust this quota by downloading at the stated maximum of 'x' Mbps in 'y' hours, it's useless, and they should really only advertise it as being a 'z' kbps plan" (where 'z' is the bitrate that would be required to exhaust the given download quota in one month).
I don't buy that argument. My home internet connection is fast, and I would buy a faster connection if one was available, but I choose to pay only for a 30 GB download quota on it. Note that I say "choose to" - higher quota plans are available to me (up to 1 TB metered, or unlimited), but I don't need that much data, so I save a bit of money by just paying for 30 GB/month. The fact that, at my line speed, I could consume that 30 GB in a few hours if I so desired, is irrelevant to me. I don't need that much data ... but when I DO need/want something, I want it FAST. If the speed of my plan doubled tomorrow, it wouldn't make much difference to the amount I download. But it would mean I would only have to wait half as long when I did download. Which is good.
( NB. I'm not saying this applies to everyone. There are people with internet usage patterns out there that consume every bit of bandwidth available to them 24/7, and thus would start consuming a lot more if the speed was higher. I have friends who torrent everything under the sun just because they can, even though they will probably never get around to listening to/watching half of it. But for me? I download the stuff I want - that stuff happens to average out to 25-30 GB a month, so the 30 GB plan suits me. For 10 bucks extra per month I can upgrade to 100 GB ... so as my data requirements grow (which they will over time as the quality of downloaded media and size of software increases), I can just upgrade my plan as required. But that has nothing to do with ~speed~. I want as much of that as possible, even if I only have a small download limit. )
Isn't that hilarious?
"You have excelled in speed, now use it fast because yo' cap ain't gonna last more than a couple o' minutes."
I guess I can pull up the weather maps and check the daily forecast to stay under my limit; it will pop up faster than it did before. Wooooowwwwwwwww.
/sarcasm
So now I can hit my 5 GB cap in less than 30 minutes. Hurray!
I'll bite on this one.
The overage charges will pay for the providers' hardware overhauls in 6 months or less. I betcha, I betcha.