[jesamccr]

lol....I haven't seen an AT&T clock 9mbps yet on LTE. Not once...let alone average that high. On the contrary, my verizon averages about 15mbps and in the middle of the city (where the signal is strongest) has hit as high as 36mbps. You say that you have to average east and west coast and that local servers paint a rosey picture. However, my I do speedtests with my friends who have AT&T and we ping the same server and we are standing next to eachother, my speed is consistently double theirs. I'd love to hear you explain why that is and why I haven't seen a AT&T phone (pinging a local server) hit over 7mbps.

[jesamccr]

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This post has been edited by jesamccr: 17 April 2012 - 01:49 PM

[jesamccr]

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This post has been edited by jesamccr: 17 April 2012 - 01:50 PM

[ShaneValentine]

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

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

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.

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.

You are quite wrong. It depends on the area. I've had Verizon, they blow in my area. That doesn't mean they suck every where else, though.

[jesamccr]

jesamccr, on 17 April 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

lol....I haven't seen an AT&T clock 9mbps yet on LTE. Not once...let alone average that high. On the contrary, my verizon averages about 15mbps and in the middle of the city (where the signal is strongest) has hit as high as 36mbps. You say that you have to average east and west coast and that local servers paint a rosey picture. However, my I do speedtests with my friends who have AT&T and we ping the same server and we are standing next to eachother, my speed is consistently double theirs. I'd love to hear you explain why that is and why I haven't seen a AT&T phone (pinging a local server) hit over 7mbps.

Okay...seriously. I just hit 16mbps down and 12mbps up pinging New York from Las Vegas. I just hit 20mbps down and 16mpbs up pinging California from Las Vegas. Average: 18mbps down and 14 mbps up. To be clear, that's not with a modem. It's with a Thunderbolt. And I have the screenshots to prove it. And like I said previously, my phone has clocked as high as 36 down before.

[DigitalEconoMs]

4G LTE is offering much faster speeds; with more apps operating and more mobile video to stream, LTE can't get here quickly enough. Businesses and consumers rely on mobile networks more than ever before. The coverage of these fast speeds on the networks can only get better as more and more carriers roll out LTE in more markets.

[EleshaBarnette]

These next generation technologies have the speed and capability to really make a difference to consumers. I know it's early in the 4G LTE roll out but it's exciting to see the carriers investing so heavily in this super fast technology.

[HankRearden]

jesamccr, on 17 April 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

jesamccr, on 17 April 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

lol....I haven't seen an AT&T clock 9mbps yet on LTE. Not once...let alone average that high. On the contrary, my verizon averages about 15mbps and in the middle of the city (where the signal is strongest) has hit as high as 36mbps. You say that you have to average east and west coast and that local servers paint a rosey picture. However, my I do speedtests with my friends who have AT&T and we ping the same server and we are standing next to eachother, my speed is consistently double theirs. I'd love to hear you explain why that is and why I haven't seen a AT&T phone (pinging a local server) hit over 7mbps.

Okay...seriously. I just hit 16mbps down and 12mbps up pinging New York from Las Vegas. I just hit 20mbps down and 16mpbs up pinging California from Las Vegas. Average: 18mbps down and 14 mbps up. To be clear, that's not with a modem. It's with a Thunderbolt. And I have the screenshots to prove it. And like I said previously, my phone has clocked as high as 36 down before.

And that's why I say averages are useless. Since when? Since people like the above. Had he just took those averages on faith he'd have missed out on quite a bit. My experience is more like his. I have hit insanely high numbers at times. The averages aren't even in the same ballpark as my experience. They are absolutely useless because as I said, they serve no one. It is better to speak to regions than a nationwide average.

Like when I hear a news bit saying the average price for a gallon of gas is $2.71. Not in my area. Not even close. It's more like $4.30 here. You simply can't look at North America as a whole and state averages. The differences from coast to coast and from city to city can be 4 to 5 times different from the average. The average is fine when things are pretty close together and rather than point out the minute differences you simply post the average. When dealing with broadband, my land like is 50 MB/sec down and 5 MBs up. I'd be willing to bet I am no where near the average. And my Verizon LTE service is easily 3 to 4 times better than your average. I can also tell you that in my area, with AT&T I had to get a Femtocell. They couldn't even hold a 3G connection in my area, which is a major area so it surprises me. Just as in Manhattan people there in a major area got horrible service.

I'd get rid of averages and instead speak to some of the major areas where people actually are. San Francisco, New York, Chicago etc etc etc. Averages, I'm sorry to say, are useless. Since when? Since forever.

[kaed]

Forgot U.S. Cellular...

[TermOfArt]

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This post has been edited by TermOfArt: 17 April 2012 - 04:55 PM

[Mrvee]

Yep, its what I experienced with Sprint. Slowest speeds since the 9600 baud modem. They tell you that you can have all the 9600 speeds you want but what if you have other things to do?

[Mrvee]

Yep, its what I experienced with Sprint. Slowest speeds since the 9600 baud modem. They tell you that you can have all the 9600 speed you want but what if you have other things to do than wait on a web page to load?

[TechMike]

MarkSullivan, on 16 April 2012 - 11:29 PM, said:

richeemxx,

Thanks much for reading. We would love to do the testing with different devices for each service, and in suburban areas. But as a media organization we don't have the resources. Actually our testing locations are spread out in a grid over the middle of the city, not all bunched together--so we do cover quite a large portion of the coverage area in each city.

"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).


Actually, that's the best way to select devices. Ideally, you would like to find a test device that's common to all four carriers, but even if you can find a phone (like the Samsung Galaxy II) that's sold by all carriers, each carrier's version of the phone has different specs, as dictated by the carriers. So instead of mixing and matching and guessing which phones are comperable, its best to ask the carriers' for the phones that will get the very best out of their networks. This allows us to compare the "best effort" service of each of the networks.

We used to use Ixia testing software running on a laptop to test in a standard way, but we are now fashioning our testing that closely replicates actual user experience in the wild--on real smartphones currently on the market. Good question -- hope that clears things up a bit.

Hey Mark,

You might note that the devices you did use don't really measure the network's performance very fairly, at least with respect to LTE. That is, the device you used on AT&T is a LTE UE Category 3 device with a maximum download speed of ~100Mbps. The phone you used on Verizon was a LTE UE Category 2 device, with a maximum download speed of ~50Mbps. As in, the device used on Verizon is only capable of a theoretical max of half of that of AT&T--talk about one hand being tied behind a back.

While it is probably not obvious to most end users (and perhaps this is a justification of your testing) all of the Motorola LTE devices are currently Category 2 devices, as they are based off of Motorola's Wrigley LTE Baseband. All of the other Verizon devices are Category 3, just like all of AT&T's devices. Regardless, this would be quite similar to running a test of an HSPA+ 21 device against an HSPA+ 42 device--not a very fair comparison, something you all recognized in splitting out T-Mobile's 21 and 42 devices into '3G' and '4G' categories.

I'm also not sure if you are aware, but Verizon is running a 10x10 network in all of their markets. (This is 10MHz for downlink and 10MHz for uplink). AT&T is running a 5x5 in several of theirs (Chicago, L.A., etc.). Until LTE-Advanced and channel bonding is implemented (several years off), Verizon will have a de facto advantage of delivering speeds capable of being 2x as fast as AT&T in those markets. This makes the results shown even more misleading--again because of the discrepancy in device capabilities.

Anyway, like you say, I realize it is impractical to test different devices on all of the carriers, but in the future, please try to make sure the test devices at least have the same capabilities.

EDIT: Here are some sources for you:

http://en.wikipedia....E.29_categories
http://www.anandtech.com/print/5198

EDIT 2: I realize that Verizon sent you this specific device to test (per them thinking it would run best), but I can't help but think that perhaps the person you dealt with didn't fully know their devices specs.

[LiveBrianD]

I wonder how the averages compare to the speed in certain areas. For instance, I ran speedtest on a 4G Samsung Galaxy Nexus at a Verizon store, and got about 25mbps down, 15mbps up. Dang, that beats my cable connection by quite a bit (15mbps down, 3mbps up). And also, some devices have better antennas than others.

[Alan0lw7]

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

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!

Yeah, I agree... I'm far more interested in coverage than speed. Not just coverage in metro areas either. When I'm in the middle of nowhere is when I most need a connection.

[KenDeNisco]

MarkSullivan, on 17 April 2012 - 11:13 AM, said:

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

When reporting statistics, you really need to report not just the average, but the standard deviation so readers can see the range. Otherwise it is like saying the average age of a crowd is 45. Are there older or younger people there? How many? And so forth.

[NewCentrist]

Seems like Sprint wasted time hoping that government intervention into the AT&T/T-Mobile merger would have gained it more time to catch up. Hopefully the FCC will opt for letting the market provide its own incentives for creating competition.

[HankRearden]

NewCentrist, on 17 April 2012 - 07:13 PM, said:

Seems like Sprint wasted time hoping that government intervention into the AT&T/T-Mobile merger would have gained it more time to catch up. Hopefully the FCC will opt for letting the market provide its own incentives for creating competition.

More government trying to look like they know something. Trying to justify their existence. Let AT&T buy T-Mobile. Or let nature take its course. T-Mobile and Sprint can both die and Verizon and AT&T can just inherit their clients. Even cheaper for AT&T and Verizon who otherwise were willing to pay for assets that are losing value every day.

Spint in particular, now trading for about $2.3 a share. So deeply in debt I wouldn't be surprised to see the company file for bankruptcy and see their creditors lose the shirts off their backs. T-Mobile will follow as they just can't afford to build their network out. And then we have the problem of Mobile broadband growing over 100% year over year and no spectrum in sight to deal with the expansion needed to harness this potential.

Mark my words. This market will cannibalize itself.

This post has been edited by HankRearden: 17 April 2012 - 07:27 PM

[devildothack]

This shows consistently how far tmo service is better than the rest.. not to mention they throttle you when you exceed your cap which is by far better than being charge XXX amount of dollars per GB like VZ/ATT..and also they are the cheapest carrier.. best carrier yet!

[CometBroski]

ONLY 13 cities?
Verizon's 4G LTE covers much more than 13 cities.