Nationwide Study Shows AT&T Has Fastest iPhone Data Speeds, Sprint Most Dropped Calls

[fpnc]

Okay, so this report is based upon "...several locations in five unnamed cities..." Five cities?

IMO, that is way too small of a sample to provide any meaningful results that could be applied on a national basis. You could probably choose five other cities and get almost the opposite results. Thus this survey/test seems like it was a waste of both time and money.

 

[themyst]

I work for sprint but have an AT&T iPhone 4. Hm.

 

[GenesisJLS]

This is worthless, since it doesn't break it down by city.

 

[Macboy Pro]

Bottom line, if you want simultaneous data and voice, rollover minutes, and a 3 times faster data network, you have to sacrifice .7 additional dropped calls out of 100. Less then 1 more out of 100 and you will have to redial. What is the primary function of your "SMART"phone.

Now we know why so many remain loyal to the AT&T iPhone. No AT&T haters need respond to the facts.

Hear a lot of people suggesting this type of statistic isn't valid since its not using the Verizon LTE network. Just remember, if you suggest the data piece is not valid, then you also must throw out the dropped call statistics also. I mean, Verizon is using old 1990's CDMA technology enabled phone. I suspect that older, more mature networks will be more stable, while faster, more edgy networks like AT&T 3G, 4G and Verizon "LTE" will still be working out the kinks.

Who knows what the drop rate for a Verizon iPhone on the LTE network would be. 2.8, 3.8, 4.5? No one knows and NO you can't pick 3 people with other phones brands on the LTE network and make a statement that the iPhone would be the same.

 

[guilderlandny]

This is worthless, since it doesn't break it down by city.

Completely agree. ATT$T speed is 1MB down and about 0.7MB up in the Albany NY area 5-bar 3G locations I frequent with my 4S - and Albany is not a small city.

 

[Fazzy]

in defense of sprint and verizon, at&t has had the iPhone for four years and so have had much longer to work out any glitches and get their network sorted

 

[nick_elt]

i thought the 4s was meant to be twice as fast as the 4?

 

[MrXiro]

Now... we know why AT&T customers remain loyal and why Mr. Jobs chose AT&T and stuck with AT&T for 3 years exclusively.

Yes... it's called an exclusive contract. I think it was originally 5 years and lasted 3.5 years before the iPhone 4 went to Verizon.

 

[MrXiro]

Sprint was great for me in Los Angeles, I like the company because they were at one point fair to their customers. The fact that they didn't nickle and dime the hell out of their customers is fantastic. (ie no charge to change your number (At&t charges 36 dollars), and No terrible Capped Data Plans) When I first moved over from At&t in 2008 to Sprint their 3G beat the ever loving crap out of At&t's by nearly twice the speed. I was downloading fast as ever, most recently just right before the release of the iPhone on Sprint the data got ridiculously slow for a few weeks but after the release the issues seemed to right itself.

4G Wimax speeds in LA get me quite a bit faster than even my HSPA+ iPhone 4S can pull right now. Tested both last night. Getting about 5Mbps on my 4S and well clearing 6Mbps with my EVO 4G's... So even in the "4G" marketing spectrum of both worlds I was doing better with Sprint.

What made me jump over to At&t had nothing to do with their service but that Sprint decided that staying "firm" on their "new" policy of restricting upgrades. This was not the policy when I first signed up for Sprint so don't give me the "you signed and are bound to contract blah blah blah BS" They fairly gave upgrades after 1 year previously and they would have kept me as a customer now if they would have just let me upgrade to the 4S (I even offered to pay the ETF) immediately. They held firm even when told that I would be leaving. So I looked into joining my family's plan on At&t which ends up being cheaper on me and I get my iPhone 4S.

I personally hate At&t for their constantly marketing lies though. They went from a $20 unlimited data plan to a $25 2gb and are advertising it as a "better deal", I hate how they initiate unreasonable data caps (both at home and wireless services) and their service is mediocre at best. High compression and terrible indoor usage... I completely lost signal going into the locker room at my local gym just yesterday.

In short this is how I see it.

At&t acts like "the man" and try to stick it to you whenever they can cause for the last 4 years they were the only iPhone game in town. Also making them more capable with iPhone users but they are all about screwing the customer whenever they can.

Sprint is like that kind of like that friend you used to know and hang out with... but since he got an iPhone turned into a raging prick and you want to slap him in the nuts for all the stupid decisions he is making in life.

 

[RobertMartens]

Remember the 90's? They weren't.

Without the success of the iPhone, iPod and iPad, there likely would be no "Macs".

I guess you can't remember the 90s either. Mac OS 8 & 9 were great. And Windows was... well 3.1, 95, 98 blah. At best kinda like Mac.

Macs big problem was 3rd party extensions freezing the computer. Mac OS X fixed that right good.

I used Macs everyday of the 90's, it was the only real computer especially before Windows 95. Late comers don't need to revise history.

BTW It was the iMac that brought Mac back from the edge.

 

[ubersoldat]

I have zero dropped calls, can make phone calls and surf the net at the same time for like 10 years, the speeds are higher than with any of the ones shown on the chart.

additionally 4G is sold here as what it really is: LTE. HSPA+ is simply 3G or 3.5G if you like.

and all this happens on vodafone germany (with 3G, I don't have 4G/LTE) but others offer the same.

 

[ChrisTX]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

AT&T had a huge head start! They've had the iPhone since day one.

It could have been on Verizon if VZ really wanted it to. Apparently they did not.

 

[davepilgrimus]

So Much for 4g

I guess now we know why AT&T isn't pushing to enlarge their network to be a 4G network like Verizon. It is surprising to me though that Verizon didn't rank higher. I guess it because they limit their bandwidth at hirer speeds.

One company I wish they would have rated is Cspire. Cpsire just started caring the iphone. They are the country's largest privately owned cell phone company and have really good reviews. So I would have liked to have seen more coverage of them.

 

[Shadyriley]

I'm witH sprit and I don't notice slow data speeds

 

[notabadname]

I guess you can't remember the 90s either. Mac OS 8 & 9 were great. And Windows was... well 3.1, 95, 98 blah. At best kinda like Mac.

Macs big problem was 3rd party extensions freezing the computer. Mac OS X fixed that right good.

I used Macs everyday of the 90's, it was the only real computer especially before Windows 95. Late comers don't need to revise history.

BTW It was the iMac that brought Mac back from the edge.

It started the ball rolling, but most analysts agree that it was after the introduction of the iPod that Apple's financial strength and true resurgence kicked off. Considering Apple nearly went bankrupt in the 90's, I stand by my OP.

 

[Stewie]

Thank you captain obvious.

I can't believe someone wasted money on this study.

 

[Jigga]

My data speed has been really slow recently on my VZ 4 in NYC.
This can't be normal right? picture below.

 

[darkfiber]

i thought the 4s was meant to be twice as fast as the 4?

According to Apple's website, the 4S is "capable" of 14.4Mbps max HSDPA download speeds (as opposed to the 7.2Mbps the iPhone 4). But just because the iPhone is "capable" that doesn't mean you are going to get those speeds. I got 5.5Mbps inside a local restaurant the other day with my iPhone 4S here in Columbus, Ohio which I think is the fastest 3G data speeds I have ever gotten on a phone. It's nice the 4S can do 14.4Mbps, but I would be happy with just getting speeds faster than the 2 or 3Mbps speeds I get now over 3G.

Thank goodness for home Wi-Fi. I only get 1Mbps or so at my house over 3G but at home I have Road Runner Extreme broadband (30Mbps down and 5Mbps Up) and with my Buffalo AirStation HighPower N300 Gigabit Wireless Router (WZR-HP-G300NH) I am getting around 27Mbps down and 4.5Mbps up all over my house on both my iPhone 4S and iPad 2 which kicks ass.

I attached 2 images of speed tests I did. One with my 3G at my house in the Hilliard, Ohio area and one with my home Wi-Fi.

 

[besweeeet]

I'm more about speed than anything, and AT&T delivers. They just need to step their LTE game up to more cities. No doubt the next iPhone will support LTE networks.

 

[reedfox11]

If T-Mobile carried the iPhone, they would have the fastest data.

Lie.

 

[Hastings101]

Macs... remember them... they were great

This site would be really boring if it was all about Macs again. We'd be lucky to get a "rumor" every week and we'd see five thousand posts about "New Macbook Pro tuesday!???????????????????" in every section of the forums.

 

[tigress666]

I personally hate At&t for their constantly marketing lies though. They went from a $20 unlimited data plan to a $25 2gb and are advertising it as a "better deal",

Lolwhat? I think you are confused. The unlimited plan was/is (I still have it) 30 dollars, not 20. So if you don't use more than 2 GB, it is a better deal to go down to the 2GB version.

Now maybe back in whenever they introduced the first iphone it was 20 dollars, but that was for Edge service, not 3G, so harder to compare prices there (and yes it's fair they charge more for a different connection, they had to pay for the infrastructure to bring you that new connection). THe only iphone you could get that plan on was the original iphone (and I'm not even sure that plan was 20 dollars honestly but I do know that some how people for a while were finagling it so they could get unlimited after AT&T stopped offering it so AT&T was letting them grandfather an Edge plan onto a 3G plan which honestly is more than I'd expect from them).

And if you really don't need much data (you have lots of access to wi-fi or maybe you do want the smartphone but really can't afford to pay for much coverage), they have the cheapest plan.

 

[AlterEg0]

It is VERY TELLING, that in inspite of the huge attraction when the IPhone first came out on AT&T, that Verizon Wireless didn't go under. There is something to be said about being the most reliable network in America. I have an AT&T phone, live right next to a new tower and get 1.2Mbps to 3.5Mbps down and 0.7 to 1.2 up, and I still think AT&T sucks. I always seem to drop calls on the major highways during peak office time. Just makes me mad to have to constantly redial into conference calls.

Bottom line... FOR ME.. AT&T sucks.

 

[ghettochris]

Sooo... what's the point of having a fast data connection if you have limited data availability to send through it?

I get what I want to do done faster, I don't use that much data, and if I go over, I still get stuff done faster, $10 a gig after my initial is irrelevant to me if I need it.

 

[SilentLoner]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

It is VERY TELLING, that in inspite of the huge attraction when the IPhone first came out on AT&T, that Verizon Wireless didn't go under. There is something to be said about being the most reliable network in America. I have an AT&T phone, live right next to a new tower and get 1.2Mbps to 3.5Mbps down and 0.7 to 1.2 up, and I still think AT&T sucks. I always seem to drop calls on the major highways during peak office time. Just makes me mad to have to constantly redial into conference calls.

Bottom line... FOR ME.. AT&T sucks.

For me. In downtown Chicago AT&T sucks that bad that I had to go to Verizon and will stick with them for the foreseeable future.