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What is everyone's 3G speeds on AT&T?

C

Cottonsworth

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 11, 2008
132
0
Hi,

I'm right in the center of Manhattan and I get on average about 1000 kbps down and 90 kbps down using the speedtest.net free app. I'm curious to see what other people are experiencing in other parts of the country or even in the New York City area. Seems kinda slow to me. :confused:
 
I don't have a speed test for you but i was in Manhattan on Wednesday and moving a 4MB file was SLOW. I was right at 1411 Broadway and 3G was slow. To be clear, it was better than it has been but still slow. Page rendering wasn't bad but opening Excel docs in email, emailing the docs, or opening from email into Numbers or QuickOffice took quite some time. 4MB to 8MB files.

It was a pain. I think AT&T has WiFi right around there and I should've used that.
 
reckless2k2 said:
I don't have a speed test for you but i was in Manhattan on Wednesday and moving a 4MB file was SLOW. I was right at 1411 Broadway and 3G was slow. To be clear, it was better than it has been but still slow. Page rendering wasn't bad but opening Excel docs in email, emailing the docs, or opening from email into Numbers or QuickOffice took quite some time. 4MB to 8MB files.

It was a pain. I think AT&T has WiFi right around there and I should've used that.
Click to expand...

Don't they advertise as the nation's fastest 3G network? Or is that the tower in some remote location in the middle of nowhere with one person using it? :(
 
To be fair, the iPhone has created an especially high congestion area especially in NYC. Hence the reason they put up a WiFi hotspot in Times Square. I believe that's where it is.

AT&T is still playing catch up with each new Apple release. AT&T couldn't handle the unexpected spike back from the 3G and then a year later you had the 3GS with the iPad in the mix and iPhone 4 now out. I'm not defending them by any means but I doubt any network could handle that explosion in the US market.

I do live in the Philly area and my general 3GS and iPad speeds are acceptable. I know when I travel to NYC that it's not great. It is MUCH better than a year ago but still has a ways to go.
 
Actually, AT&T 3G network has been in the toilet since around the 4th of July. Check the iPhone forum for a 10+ page thread on the topic.

Particularly, it's the upload speed that is suffering horribly. The first week I had my iPhone 4 after launch, I would get 4 megabits down and 1.5 up on the new HSUPA hardware, now I'm getting 2 down and .1 up if I'm lucky. AT&T has said that Lucent or one of their network tower software providers had a glitch that they are supposedly working on, but it's been nearly two weeks at this point. Time will tell...
 
In Louisville, KY, here are some results for speed tests I've run:

Download speeds (Mbps) - 1.23, 1.27, 1.56, 0.43
Upload speeds (Mbps) - 0.13, 0.27, 0.22, 0.22

On average, around 1.2 Mbps down/.2 Mbps up.

Hope that helps!
 
10.2mbps.

Oh wait, that is my 4G speed with Sprint, sorry.

I didn't feel like getting the WiFi version and having AT&T cripple my viewing experience, I like things to be in full resolution.
 
Cottonsworth said:
Hi,

I'm right in the center of Manhattan and I get on average about 1000 kbps down and 90 kbps down using the speedtest.net free app. I'm curious to see what other people are experiencing in other parts of the country or even in the New York City area. Seems kinda slow to me. :confused:
Click to expand...

Chicago suburbs:


Download speed: 494.16 Kbps (0.48 Mbps / 61.77 KB/s)
Total test time: 49.733 Seconds
Connection type: 3G

I do this test routinely and ATT here has definitely slowed - this is the slowest speed I have recorded.
 
So I guess the slow speeds have to do with their network trouble. I wonder what 3G speeds are suppose to be?
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

My avg in Torrance CA is 2.5 down and 1.2 up. I am sure it depends on location so you should check with att or some specification source for theoretical limits. I also have about 3-4 bars on new OS. Down about 1 bar from prior release.
 
I'm in Tysons Galleria in McLean, VA and I just got 1565k down and 96k down.

Outside, I usually get between 2500 and 3100k down and I cannot remember what I usually get one upload speed.
 
My results can be all over the map based on time of day, usage, etc. but I have noticed they have gotten much better in the past 2 months. At times I can get DL speeds greater than 4Mbps and even 5 to 5.5Mbps. I get similar results on my iPhone 4. There are times it's maybe 1.5 to 2.0Mbps but overall not bad.
 
reckless2k2 said:
I don't have a speed test for you but i was in Manhattan on Wednesday and moving a 4MB file was SLOW. I was right at 1411 Broadway and 3G was slow.
Click to expand...

Broadway from 23rd St. to 34th St. has always been a 3G dead zone in my experience. Ironic too, because AT$T has a store right on 24th at B'way/5th.
 
South San Francisco, California

4803109929_997bae2228_b.jpg
 
bowlerman625 said:
My results can be all over the map based on time of day, usage, etc. but I have noticed they have gotten much better in the past 2 months. At times I can get DL speeds greater than 4Mbps and even 5 to 5.5Mbps. I get similar results on my iPhone 4. There are times it's maybe 1.5 to 2.0Mbps but overall not bad.
Click to expand...

I think you are the only AT&T customer to get those speeds, congratulations.
 
I wouldn't know. I still have Edge. In January AT&T promised in a press release that 3G would be available this year for us. They're running out of year and I can only identify one place on the coverage map where there was a change in Pennsylvania this year.
 
You guys got it good. In downtown Birmingham, AL during business hours you are lucky if you get 400 kbps download, 80 kbps upload. I've seen the downloads drop below 100 routinely, and have a full 5 bars 3G on my iPad......
 
highly variable

I've seen both 3G and Edge performance to be highly variable here in Podunkville (Portland Oregon metro area).

And even if a speed test claims good 3G performance, sometimes the iPad is slow to pull from various sites; a laptop in the same situation is usually faster. YMMV.
 
Worst ever in Philly

3G
424 Down
62 Up.

EDGE
104 Down
36 Up.


Who can we complain to? This is NOT appropriate 3G speeds.
 
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