AT&T Tops 3G Wireless Performance Study

[davidgrimm]

It may be faster in those cities, but where I end up using it, I'm lucky if I get an EDGE connection. And for what I pay, It ought to be much much better.

This is one reason I'm interested in checking out Verison - Hopefully they will have 3g service where ATT only has EDGE.

Although, I currently pay $2,000 a year and I wish that could be a much smaller number, like $480 on Sprint. I could easily pay for an iPad and a dedicated GPS with the savings from 1 year and pocket the $1,500 savings from the second year.

 

[marksman]

no one is debating that ATT isn't fast......what's being debated is the LACK OF COVERAGE.

whoop-dee-doo....ATT has fast 3G service, IF you can even get coverage.

Most people are covered by AT&T's 3G network.

Most cows are covered by Verizon.

If I were a cow, I would go Verizon, obviously.

 

[anthonybsd]

I was in NY this past week, staying in the Madison Park area and have no issues with connection or speeds. I was up to the Natural History, took the bus, and tested along the route and never fell below 1200/kbits. Was in times square and lost 2 call's, but that was really it.

I was expected a lot worse.

There must have been a Yankees game or something because something clearly went amiss. This is what my typical (since the day I got IPhone 3G) rates look like (shot 20 minutes ago)

I think AT&T is just completely horrible at handling large amounts of spikes in demand for data. Case in point. Last summer I went to Woodsbury Commons. It's a fancy shmancy shopping mall in NY, an hour or so drive from NYC. My wife and mother needed to buy something so I was naturally relegated to a day of web browsing and playing games on the IPhone. We got to the place early to get good parking spot - got there around 8AM. I was playing with my new Zipcar app, everything worked perfectly. Unlocked the car, played with honking, browsed some latest stuff on Digg. Blazing fast. Probably upwards of 500-600kbps. Tried the same app at noon when every yuppie from NYC has gotten to the place - no connection. No data, no edge. Able to place phone calls perfectly though

On the other hand CDMA/EVDO carriers have no trouble handling extra demand - their data runs on the same infrastructure as their voice. Adding capacity for one adds it for another. Oversimplifying matters a bit, Sprint one day just flipped a switch and every one of their towers automatically became "3G", whereas AT&T needed new towers (except for EDGE that runs on TDMA).

 

[deedas]

Baltimore City, Canton. My speed outside my house as of 10 minutes ago: 227kbits (down) 77kbits (up) 189ms (latency)

I've also never seen speeds near what they got for Baltimore. How exactly did they conduct this test?

 

[mygoldens]

WOW, is this BIASED or what!

I had an iPhone and now the Droid.

The dropped calls and the time you have to wait for a web page on the iPhone is nuts!

The Droid, smokes the iPhone on AT&T, the reason I got rid of the iPhone was AT&T (and the kiddy gaming, not manly).

NOW they are trying to tell me AT&T and T-Mobile (ya, right) are smoking hot, fast, screaming Internet companies. ya, right.

 

[RaZaK]

I’m surprised AT&T hasn’t touted these improvements in ads. (At least I haven’t seen them do so.)

My medium-sized city never seemed to have a problem EXCEPT in a few very small holes where coverage was just plain missing. Like 10-foot holes... one right by my friend’s house and one right by the Apple Store

there's actually a new Luke Wilson Ad with people in a restaurant looking at their Droid's and complaining about their data access speeds.

I'm sure it will be rolled out nationwide soon.

 

[NIPRING]

verizon...lol

 

[anthonybsd]

NOW they are trying to tell me AT&T and T-Mobile (ya, right) are smoking hot, fast, screaming Internet companies. ya, right.

That's why I think they outright making stuff up. I had faster mobile Internet in NYC 8 years ago with Sprint (Palm Treo 300/CDMA2k beyotches!) than I've ever had with AT&T and IPhone 3G here.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

there's actually a new Luke Wilson Ad with people in a restaurant looking at their Droid's and complaining about their data access speeds.

I'm sure it will be rolled out nationwide soon.

What's funny is that ad never even addressed what the original ad spoke about. In the original Verizon ad, they talked about the lack of coverage to send the information through. AT&T responded by talking about network speed, totally missing the entire point being lack of coverage.

 

[ks-man]

In Chicago I've never had an issue with data speed but rather with voice quality and dropping calls. It has gotten better over the past 6 months but I still seem to drop calls when driving in my car for long conversations.

Testing at sporting events aren't fair as I've seen terrible performance on all major networks when people are congregated in tight areas. I agree with most people around here that if Verizon gets the iphone or ipad, many more will be grumbling about Verizon's network.

 

[marksman]

What's funny is that ad never even addressed what the original ad spoke about. In the original Verizon ad, they talked about the lack of coverage to send the information through. AT&T responded by talking about network speed, totally missing the entire point being lack of coverage.

Not true as the original ads spoke to AT&T covering most of the population of the country which is different from Verizon's map which simply shows geographical area covered.

 

[Papajohn56]

Speed doesn't really make a difference if you can't get signal.

 

[kdarling]

Weird. Verizon finally gets some popular smartphones (Droid + Eris brought it a lot of new customers) and then runs some ads touting how big its 3G coverage is (bringing it even more customers), and now its 3G network is benchmarking slower? Whodathought that adding load to a network would slow it down?!

It's no surprise that adding load to a network slows down data speeds.

The difference is, it only slows down data on Verizon. Voice is on a different carrier.

On ATT, more data load causes both data slowdown _and_ dropped voice calls.

Most people are covered by AT&T's 3G network.
Most cows are covered by Verizon.
If I were a cow, I would go Verizon, obviously.

Most people are covered by Verizon's 3G network.

Verizon 3G covers 285 million people. ATT 3G covers 230 million.

That's 55 million more people. Not cows.

 

[WirelessNetwork]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Safari/531.21.10)

This is Ken Biba from Novarum - who performed the survey.

The results are very consistent from city to city ... AT&T really has improved their service dramatically from our April/May 2009 identical survey. Also consistent from city to city for ALL the carriers is strong variation in a city as a user moves from location to location.

 

[mattwolfmatt]

Yeah. I really don't care much about data. Usually I can wait for that. But when I wanna make a call, I'd like for it to go through.

 

[jdhough1]

Results are report differently on 9to5mac.com

The numbers of the 13 City Performance Average are different on Macrumors.com and 9to5mac.com. Macrumors has Verizon with a reliability of 76% vs. 92% on the other site.

With my experience with Verizon's network i tend to believe the higher of the two numbers.

http://www.9to5mac.com/att-still-sucks-in-ny-sf-******s-32460263

https://www.macrumors.com/2010/02/23/atandt-tops-3g-wireless-performance-study/

 

[DakotaGuy]

Most people are covered by AT&T's 3G network.

Most cows are covered by Verizon.

If I were a cow, I would go Verizon, obviously.

Nice bash against us rural people. I hope you enjoyed your dinner tonight. Food doesn't grow on concrete. I am grateful that Verizon thinks everyone deserves good service. AT&T focuses only on the top markets and leaves everyone else behind.

If it wasn't for progressive companies like Verizon providing competition to AT&T rural people would still be cranking their phones and talking on a party line.

 

[OdysseyExplorer]

My iPhone gets weak or no signal all the time for seemingly random reasons. My girlfriend has Verizon and she always has full bars, and when we ride the subway in Chicago she even has full bars. AT&T definitely doesn't have coverage in the subways. lol

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

Not true as the original ads spoke to AT&T covering most of the population of the country which is different from Verizon's map which simply shows geographical area covered.

*sigh*

What are you even talking about? I read that statement a handful of times and have yet to make sense of it.

 

[cyndikdb]

No 3G

And then there are those of us who pay the same price and are never in 3G.... So these numbers are useless.

 

[DakotaGuy]

How many times have you driven to Bozeman?

Bozeman has 27,000+ residents. Maybe those people care about having good service? I have never seen a place like this message board where some people don't think anyone counts unless they live in the nation's largest metro areas.

There are millions of US citizens that live in smaller cities and rural areas. They deserve the same service as everyone else does. Verizon provides almost all of those areas the same level of service they give to the largest cities. AT&T doesn't. It's that simple.

 

[schwell]

Bozeman has 27,000+ residents. Maybe those people care about having good service? I have never seen a place like this message board where some people don't think anyone counts unless they live in the nation's largest metro areas.

There are millions of US citizens that live in smaller cities and rural areas. They deserve the same service as everyone else does. Verizon provides almost all of those areas the same level of service they give to the largest cities. AT&T doesn't. It's that simple.

Yes Verizon provides their slower 3G service to a wider footprint.

 

[aristobrat]

Nice bash against us rural people. I hope you enjoyed your dinner tonight. Food doesn't grow on concrete. I am grateful that Verizon thinks everyone deserves good service. AT&T focuses only on the top markets and leaves everyone else behind.

Verizon started its 3G rollout in 10/2003 with the DC/San Diego markets. Top markets were rolled out over 2004/2005. It took an additional two years (until mid-2007) to fully cover rural areas.

So using your logic, there was a 2-4 year gap during Verizon's 3G roll-out where Verizon *didn't think* people in rural areas deserved good 3G service.

AT&T started their 3G rollout in 12/2005, and it's going slower than Verizon's did, but it's still going. And just like with every major network carrier's rollout, it's the rural people that are last to get the new coverage.

 

[icyfire]

Verizon started its 3G rollout in 10/2003 with the DC/San Diego markets. Top markets were rolled out over 2004/2005. It took an additional two years (until mid-2007) to fully cover rural areas.

So using your logic, there was a 2-4 year gap during Verizon's 3G roll-out where Verizon *didn't think* people in rural areas deserved good 3G service.

AT&T started their 3G rollout in 12/2005, and it's going slower than Verizon's did, but it's still going. And just like with every major network carrier's rollout, it's the rural people that are last to get the new coverage.

Except that today it's 2010 and 2 facts are apparent. Verizon has the most widespread 3G coverage and AT&T can't find its head from its ass regarding 3G coverage in the US. Maybe AT&T should just pack up and move to Europe where I'm sure they'll be excited about the smaller land mass they would have to cover.

 

[desigarms]

Well being that I have/had both the Iphone 3G on AT&T and as of recently Motorola Droid on Verizon...here's my experience. I'm in San Jose, CA.

I was a long time verizon customer until I jumped ship because I really wanted the iphone. In many ways I like the iPhone, but disappointed with many things, such as inability to multi-task, Apple playing 'big-brother' with what I can/can't do. Back to topic, AT&T service at first sucked. Around June of 2009 service improved significantly! Going from 2 bars to 5 five bars in MOST areas. However, lots and lots of dropped calls. I don't talk much during the day because I use my work line. So out of the 15-30 calls that I do make when I'm off work, half would drop at some point. Data speeds is however very fast!

Coverage is not consistent. As I drive to the outer edge of town, I get absolutely ZERO coverage.


With the Droid on Verizon. The first thing I noticed is data speeds IS SLOWER. However, coverage is everywhere! I can be in the hills and I can have a conversation just like a land-line!

As far as functionality. The iPhone vs. Droid. The iPhone is a great phone, it still is. The DROID is just better...for me. The ability to run apps in the back is amazing, like having a To Do List App that actually reminds me when something is due. Seemless integration of Google services (Gmail, Calendar, Voice)...wow!!!!

For NOW, the DrOID is the best phone for me. I do miss plugging my Iphone into my car for music. But can I can just as easily load MP3 into an SD card and stick it into my Pioneer head unit.