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Nice article but it lacks a few things I'd like to see. Why not use several devices for each service? Which companies had the best coverages or best speeds in outlying areas as I'm sure most of your tests were in the middle of downtown?

Speed is great but if I can't get it then its a moot point!

We asked the four wireless carriers to send us the 3G and 4G phones they thought would perform best on their data networks.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that approach as a benchmark. That's like allowing Intel/AMD to hand select the best CPU and benchmarks those (oh wait they do that).

This post has been edited by richeemxx: 16 April 2012 - 08:56 PM

Using a PHONE to test network data speed is pointless. To actually TEST a network, get a USB MODEM and test that way. I have yet to see less than 15Mbit on my Verizon LTE modem.

waldojim, on 16 April 2012 - 09:43 PM, said:

I also own a Verizon LTE modem. And I average 20 GBs a month with it. I have yet to see such low performance form it. The iPad has been pretty darn impressive. And a friend has an Android which gets more than double, if not 4 times the speed detailed in the article. I've had service with every carrier mentioned, Verizon is the best. I found T-Mobile to be pretty poor. I'd rank it the worst. AT&T is the second worst. And I'd actually put sprint at number 2.

richeemxx, on 16 April 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

I get 20Mbps on T-MOBILE with my PHONE, so I don't know what you guys are whining about...

waldojim, on 16 April 2012 - 09:43 PM, said:

waldojim,

We used to test with modems, but this year we decided to move to smartphone-based tests alone as a way of more closely replicating the actual usage patterns of smartphone users. Far more people use their wireless service on phones than with modems, and doing modem-based testing would not give them very useful information about how well a given service will work on their phone.

Also, as I responded to your other comment, but you are probably running a testing tool that pings a local server, which paints a rosy picture of speeds. because our tests try to replicate real life usage, we ping servers on both coasts, then average the results. this does yield slower speeds, especially with LTE service, but it's a much truer picture of the speeds you're getting when doing actual mobile web tasks like shopping, photo sharing or watching video. hope that clears things up a little. M

HankRearden, on 16 April 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

Hank -- thanks for reading. 20 GB is a lot -- what kind of plan do you have. What testing tool are you using to test your speeds. As I mentioned to another commenter, many speed tests ping from a local server by default, which can paint a very optimistic picture of speeds. In everyday mobile internet use, we are usually pinging far away servers, not local ones.

Mark

I'm not surprised to see the Verizon people disagreeing with the tests wholeheartedly. Friend typically gets 15mbps back home in Orange County.

MarkSullivan, on 16 April 2012 - 11:35 PM, said:

My personal tests are from Texas to Ohio. This results in a 50ms ping, and between 12 and 15Mb/s average speeds. Also, when downloading actual software, I manage a respectable 3MB/sec. My point is that a single phone is not representing much of anything. Especially when trying to make claims of what the carriers can do. This is a terrible disservice. The other carriers may also have fared better with proper testing. Even if you didn't want to test with a laptop, using more than one phone makes more sense.

Lastly, I use my modem quite often. Rosie pictures aren't needed. I see speeds faster than DSL, and many cable services, IE: well over 10Mbit, in daily usage of this thing. I was actually shocked to see tested speeds as low as you guys found for the Dallas area, as that happens to be where I live, and use this most often.

Thank you for replying to reader concerns!

I have sprint, It's [censored] compaired to any other phone service out their when it comes to 3G & 4G.

I really wish we never got the iphone, ever since then we been dealing with ATT like speeds.

I love seeing how when these tests are done, somehow ATT always has faster download speeds over VZW.

Yet I have held both an ATT and Verizon iPhone 4 in my hands and loaded the exact same webpage and the ATT device always took longer.

I know the test is based on average speeds. But that average seems way to high, when more than 60% of AT&T customers complain about how slow their devices are on 3G. Here in Chicago, AT&T service is atrocious.

T-Mobile here is very fast, but when you leave Chicago the service gets really bad. But I think they are faster because they just have less users and they don't have iPhone, or very many very fancy phones.

ATT, VZW and Sprint all have data hogging fancy smartphones that bog down there network.

Why was US Cellular included in the test? They are a major carrier here in the US. What about MetroPCS?

xyberviri, on 17 April 2012 - 06:23 AM, said:

Because it isn't the network, it's the phone.
When Verizon finally got the iPhone, I compared it to my HTC Droid Incredible as far as speed. Even on the exact same network, the iPhone was slower most of the time.

I also compared our users in the Office who all use ATT iPhones with some that had Blackberries at the time before we switched them. Even tho the Blackberries have slower browsers, they still loaded many websites faster than iPhone did.

My niece who just got her first iPhone with Sprint, who originally had the original Evo 4G, says her iPhone is slower.

This post has been edited by QUADICON: 17 April 2012 - 07:47 AM

MarkSullivan, on 16 April 2012 - 11:41 PM, said:

I download large graphics files. Some as large 3 GBs over a MiFi at times if I have to. I simply watch the rate of the download. If you're doing small file downloads your speed may not be very accurate. Also I have to disagree with your comment about the real world and averaging. The problem with publishing an average, the way I see it, is this. The guys on the low end will not see numbers as high as your average. Likewise the guys on the higher end will not see numbers as low as your average. I think it's time to throw out the average benchmark and instead simply state a few regions that are densely populated. San Francisco, New York, Texas, etc. Not a lot but enough to give the audience an idea about their region. As one member here stated, he gets 20 Mbs with T-Mobile. Me, I'm lucky to get a bar at all on T-Mobile. AT&T had dropped so many calls for me in a single conversation, once 9 drops in a single conversation, that it doesn't matter to me what they offer. They could be 2 terabytes a second but if the linked is dropped over and over I wouldn't care.

I realize the article can't be all things to all people. I just think that averages no longer serve as a good benchmark. No one actually experiences the average. So the data serves no one.

I just have a 5 GB plan. Verizon doesn't slow me down when I go over. They just send me repeated warnings that I am off plan and charge me $10 per GB over. Which I'm fine with. I just use it as much as I need to and pay the bill when it's due. I need the data and can't get land links in some of the areas I'm in.

I carry an iPhone, MiFi LTE and iPad 3 LTE on verizon, and I keep a simple backup smart phone on Virgin, just in case my phone is damaged or is otherwise not useable. So far, it's never been needed, but I don't mind paying for peace of mind.

This post has been edited by HankRearden: 17 April 2012 - 08:05 AM

xyberviri, on 17 April 2012 - 06:23 AM, said:

Yeah I dropped Spint a while ago. That company is trying hard, but they are just in a bad place. Too many expensive missteps. Just not a good company any more, hence the discount prices. You pay more for Verizon, but the LTE services on the west coast are amazing. I don't smile at the phone bill, but I will readily admit that the service they provide is the best I have had so far. I travel a lot to San Francisco, LA, Manhattan, and Las Vegas. Sometimes Alabama and Texas, depending on business. For the United States I prefer Verizon.

Thanks for the information and your views. However, I disagree with you about this:

"I just think that averages no longer serve as a good benchmark. No one actually experiences the average. So the data serves no one."

Since when do averages not serve as a good benchmark? What has changed? I think you would see that actual speed scores would group nicely around the averages with exceptionally high and low scores tailing off on both sides.

I will say (as we do in the story) that testing a city on one or two days out of the year at a limited number of test locations certainly can not predict actual speeds for everybody in the city. The best a person can do is to test service with their own device using a good testing tool. We all know that wireless speeds depend on lots of variables--traffic, topography, backhaul, device horsepower, etc.--many of which are outside the control of the user. But real life speed averages derived from through actual research on the ground (not crowdsourced) can give people a general feel for the performance of the network, and at the performance of the networks in relation to others in the market. Major themes emerge (see Sprint's performance) that are meaningful, and certainly helpful to someone who is about to select a carrier.

All that said, we plan to do a follow-up story that will include the actual speeds we recorded for all services--3G and 4G--at each testing location. If averages aren't your thing, maybe looking at specific speeds/locations would be more useful.

Mark

QUADICON, on 17 April 2012 - 07:47 AM, said:

QUADICON, on 17 April 2012 - 07:41 AM, said:

That's an interesting test you with the iPhones. We did some browser speed benchmarking with a variety of phones all connected to same Wi-fi network, and found that the VZ phones loaded pages faster.

The scenario where you leave the city with the T-Mobile phone is a weak spot in our tests. We aren't able to get a good look at the reach of good coverage out into the 'burbs and rurals. Thanks for reading.

xyberviri, on 17 April 2012 - 06:23 AM, said:

"ATT-like speeds." That's pretty funny. I know from talking to smartphone users that they have long memories, and people will never forget AT&T's poor service to the original iPhone."

Great article, the one thing I was interested in seeing was how fast each device downloaded mobile media content in real time. If 4G allows for faster times then 3G which of these machines downloads content like say a YouTube video or a T.V. episode faster. Which provides better streaming for Netflix... Etcetra