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I did the big upgrade; from a 3G to a 4S.

In Manhattan, I was lucky to see 700k with the 3G, but I've been getting 2.5M regularly since Friday with the 4S. So I'm now getting about 1/3 of the theoretical max of 3G with my new "4G" iPhone 4S....

It's a lot better than it was, but where's my 14.4M? Maybe inside an AT&T laboratory...
 
"Still, AT&T's present network is capable of much faster speeds than both Sprint's and Verizon's."

OP should add "only when using an iPhone 4S".
Verizon's EVDO rev. A 3G network that iPhone 4S connects to is in theory much slower than AT&T's 3G (even though AT&T calls it 4G) 3.1mbps to 14.4mpbs.
But when looking at the whole network, Verizon's 4G LTE dominates AT&T in all but 4 markets where they are even in terms of LTE spectrum deployed (San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta) In Chicago Verizon deployed 10x10Mhz LTe vs 5X5Mhz soy AT&T's which gives 73.6mbps vs 39mbps theoretical throughput advantage.
Verizon has over 160 markets blanketed with LTE and 5 LTE mobile smartphones vs AT&T's 5 markets and zero smartphones at the moment.

Ditto. From a speed perspective, Verizon will always be faster and/or handle more users than AT&T because they have more spectrum to work with. And heck, in some places they've got 46Mhz of spectrum, which means they can hit over 150Mbps theoretical (but those specific locations aren't that interesting for most people).
 
I haven't seen anything better, my sisters 3GS gets as fast as my 4S, less than 1mbps, and my dad's HTC Inspire 4G gets 2-3 mbps down
 
WTF, I'm only getting 1mbps on my 4S. I had no idea AT&T users in other areas were getting such better speeds. My iPhone 4 floated around the same.
 
Ok, so AT&T is faster in the tests.

Then why in real world use does Verizon load web pages faster than AT&T often? Is it because AT&T is just prone to packet loss, and has a slower back end?

BTW the above is a question, not a statement...
 
WTF, I'm only getting 1mbps on my 4S. I had no idea AT&T users in other areas were getting such better speeds. My iPhone 4 floated around the same.

I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM!!! We need more towers i think, because almost everyone around here uses At&t and almost everyone has smartphone's!
 
WTF, I'm only getting 1mbps on my 4S. I had no idea AT&T users in other areas were getting such better speeds. My iPhone 4 floated around the same.

Your probably not in a HSPA+ area then...

Ok, so AT&T is faster in the tests.

Then why in real world use does Verizon load web pages faster than AT&T often? Is it because AT&T is just prone to packet loss, and has a slower back end?

I've never heard of this tbh... generally most people seem to believe that AT&T has fast data speeds, while Verizon has more reliable service.
 
Nonsense. The speed increase is not device-related, unless it's >7.2 Mbps, and that's not the case for most. And, anyways, a speed of 3-4 Mbps for everybody would be a dream.

1 Mbps would be a dream. I get on a 4 in NYC, upper east and high up, looking onto an antenna 0.3 Mbps... :(
 
I recently upgraded at home from an ATT 3g mobile broadband card to a HPSA+ supported one(what ATT is calling 4g). My download speeds went from 2-3Mb to the 5-7Mb range as a result. 4GS users in upgraded areas should be seeing similar results.

Oh and to the guy saying that 5-7Mb is still below theoretical max for 7.2Mb HPSA the real life speeds with HPSA is generally around half of theoretical max.
 
what area?

Columbus, OH

I get 7-9 downtown now (well, not in the center of the city, where there's too much traffic, but just outside downtown), and about 5 Mbps near my house, on the east side.
 
Oh damn... you caught me! :eek:

his 'correction' gave me my first LOL this morning. that is exactly like one brother of my Pops, who spends way too much time correcting people's typing and grammar. needless to say he isn't the most fun guy at family events and socially pretty much a dud, but he does spell correctly.
 
Slower Speeds for me :(

I used to get around 3-4Mbps, but now I'm getting around 1-2Mbps over 3G. Honestly it's the only things I can find wrong with using the 4S vs the 4.
 
Hmm... I'll have to try this test later today. We live in a suburb of DC (where there should be HSPA+ coverage). I still have an iPhone 4 and my wife has an iPhone 4S, so we could test at the same location and compare the results. I'll report back with an edit to this post...

EDIT: Testing done. Did 3 rounds, each simultaneously with the iPhones about a foot from each other. Both phones showed 3 (out of 5) bars of signal.

Format of results is Ping (ms), Download (Mbps), Upload (Mbps)

iPhone 4S:
1: 88, 1.46, 1.24
2: 88, 1.17, 1.04
3: 78, 2.96, 1.48
AVG: 84.6, 1.38, 1.25

iPhone 4:
1: 152, 2.01, .78
2: 156, .77, .54
3: 166, 1.29, .29
AVG: 158, 1.36, .54

So, clearly the iPhone 4S is the winner in my test, but not nearly by the margin others are showing. The biggest win though is in ping, which the 4S is getting nearly twice as good results. In my experience, ping has been a major differentiator between AT&T's network and other networks such as Verizon and Sprint, with AT&T posting traditionally good throughput but very high latency and the others not offering as much throughput but having very good latency (it used to be common for me to get 300+ ms pings on AT&T 3G). It appears that AT&T has now vastly narrowed that gap and is putting up much more respectable numbers.
 
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Only problem is one block away form the place where you get 7Mbps the phone drops down to EDGE and only gets 0.001Mbps...

At least that's how it is here in Houston. At least in the Museum District / Rice / Hermann Park / Medical Center areas.


I just switched from AT&T to Verizon by the way, and while Verizon has lower maximum speeds (I've rarely seem it go higher than 2Mbps), there seems to be less latency and service is much more reliable and it feels faster (it never goes below 1 Mbps), which is more important than high maximum speeds if you're in the exact location you need to get them and no data in other places.
 
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all i got was this..

speedcat
 

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