PC Mag Tests: AT&T has the fastest mobile network in the nation

By on Jun 3, 2010 at 12:42 PM
mobile June 3, 2010

PCMag-mobile tests

There’s nothing like starting a carrier flame-war to get you through the rest of the week is there? PC Mag has just finished a mobile broadband study pitting the data rates of U.S. carriers AT&T, Cricket, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint 3G and Sprint 4G against one another. Now, before we all get hot under the collar, the study parameters clearly state:

We didn’t test voice quality, dropped calls or coverage areas; while those are very important measurements, these tests were all about mobile Internet. We ran approximately 1,000 rounds of tests (totaling more than 10,000 individual tests) in 20 cities.

The PC Mag data has crowned AT&T as the overall winner; not to mention the winner of the Southern, Central, and Western regions of the United States. T-Mobile, thanks to their HSPA and HSPA+ rollouts, took the speed title in the Northeast region. We understand that a cellular phone isn’t much good without the phone component, but what do you think about the network speeds? Surprised?

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  • craphos

    oh, well, you can wait about 3 mins till you get the connection, but after that… is so fast brother! lol

  • mike

    i went to a verizon mall kiosk down here in south florida. i ran the speed test app from their incredible and from my nexus running on tmobile. my max dl speed was like 600 k/sec and the incredible had a max dl of 2megs/sec…..

    • Alex

      Like you said, the Nexus was running on T-Mobile.

    • Bunifa@SprintPOS

      Florida doesn’t have the upgraded 3G network speed yet, it’s not a surprise.

      Shove it Alex.

    • chris

      I get 3+ megs/sec on my Tmo G1!I live in north jersey though.

  • therodt

    at&t is the fastest, according to this test…Deal with it!

  • DaJe’ J. BarbouR

    I HAD A IPHONE AND IT BROKE… I AM CURRENTLY USING A RAZOR.. SO I WAS WONDERING IF I ORDERED A NEW IPHONE FROM ATT TODAY AND GOT THE UNLIMITED PLAN CAN I UPGRADE TO THE NEW IPHONE WHENEVER IT COMES OUT FOR THE REGULAR PRICE.?? i dont want to have to get those new plans.

    • wild homes

      I’m not sure I get what it is you want to do. What you need to do, in a way that won’t bungle it all, is this: borrow any crappy smartphone from a friend… put your SIM card in it and turn it on. Call up AT&T and talk to them about your plan– have them recognise the device your SIM is in, and change to the applicable data plan ($30/month smartphone 5GB) now before they change to the Data Normal/Pro plans in a few days. This way, you’ll already be set for a suitable plan when you get your new iPhone.

      Doing it the way you suggest (or the way I’m interpreting your suggestion, because it’s very unclear) is going to cost you a shit-ton of money. There’s a much better way.

    • wild homes

      And typically Apple permits people who’ve bought an iPhone within two weeks of the new phone’s launch to return and swap… but since we don’t know when exactly the phone will launch this year– or if they’ll continue to let people do the swap thing– I wouldn’t attempt it.

      • DaJe’ J. BarbouR

        ok that makes since. thanks.!

    • Alex

      It all depends. When your iPhone broke did you change your plan, or did you just take your SIM card out and put it in the razor? If you changed your plan then yes. Let me ask you a question before you order your iPhone. Why do you need to order an iPhone when the new one is about to come out? All you need to do is get the $30 unlimited plan if you don’t already have it before the new plans take affect. It dosen’t matter what type of phone you have as long as you have the unlimited plan.

      • DaJe’ J. BarbouR

        because i was going to order it and do a swap out.. but i have all the info i need.

  • MikeD

    What is wrong with a lot of people on here? The test was about who is the fastest. Simple as that. PC mag found AT&T to be the leader of the pack. It doesn’t paint the whole picture of a carrier but damn at least they have a something to brag about. Why such a rabid response by some people?

    I think too few reasonable people are commenting on this site.

    • Strange

      I can’t believe that this is even news. Verizon openly states that the max speeds on their EVDO network are not as fast as ATT’s network. This past is true. They also state that their 3G network provides more coverage and has better quality than ATT. This part is also true. The 2 metrics are not mutually exclusive.

      Even my old beater can do 0-60 in a few seconds… if I push it off a cliff. Does that make it better than a Ferrari, or just a bit faster?

  • LMB

    The sad thing is AT&T execs will see this result and declare victory which means less focus on fixing their broken network which means the AT&T customer loses when these types of reports come out and don’t reflect the real world of people’s experiences.

  • gregg

    :::yawn::: This is hella boring. How many times are you guys gonna report this?

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • John

    Why are people so loyal to mobile carriers when they’re obviously not loyal to you?

  • fort

    Joke, PC meg,CNET,PC World are all on the Iphone take. Look them up right now they will still say the Iphone is faster or better then any phone out. What a joke.

  • DustinC

    I love how the AT&T haters on tech sites love to bash AT&T and refuse to accept actual data. It’s awesome. Stop trying to make excuses for why you don’t “trust” an INDEPENDENT source to test network speed. Check PC World’s independent test that got the same results. AT&T is a faster network in addition to handling twice the mobile data that any other carrier has to handle on their respective networks. Accept it and get over it.

  • Clown College Graduates

    What you fools fail to realize is that the larger pieces are falling into place. The network performance is the best right now, there is NO ARGUING OR CRYING TO MOMMY ABOUT THE DATA.

    With ongoing investments in backhaul, it is going to be interesting in a few months when AT&T is blowing the doors off 4G networks while on 3.5G both in up/down.

  • jonathan

    Now I don’t feel so bad about my carrier. I’m sure the iPhone being on AT

  • jonathan

    Oopps, I don’t know why the rest of my comments were cut off. Anyway, I really don’t have any issues with ATT here at the outer suburbs of Chicago, other than the rare dropped call. Pairing with the Iphone sure improved ATT’s image. I know I will severely downgraded for my comments since liking Apple and ATT is frowned upon here, but just being truthful.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

    • MikeD

      Liking something is not frowned upon, but being a blind rabid fanboy is

      • jonathan T

        I don’t consider myself a rabid fanboy of anything. I’m on my first Iphone coming from having Nseries Symbian phones for 6 years. Have had anything from the old Apple IIe of yesteryears, Cryptic DOS, PC for many years, all kinds of game consoles, Pocket PCs, Palm Pilots to the smartphones. Been with AT&T for years since I haven’t had issues with them, no reason yet for me to change. I know I’m giving you an idea how old I am, but does all this resemble rabid brand loyalty to you. Right now, I’m going with the IPhone till I feel it doesn’t suit me anymore. I get what suits me in the now, if android in a couple of years beats out Iphone OS, then I go with android. Simple. But, I think Apple will be on top for a while. They have built themselves a solid reputation and is the no. 1 tech company and I know that others won’t accept that, but you have give credit where credit is due.

  • ben

    fuck it

  • rrt190

    wow 4G from Sprint really isn’t that much faster…

  • Geoff

    Sprints 4G is essentially AT&Ts 3G. Since AT&T is GSM, EDGE is what they call 2.5G while Verizon and Sprint call their answer to EDGE, 3G. Therefor, Sprints 4G is really just HSDPA which AT&T calls 3G.

    • bob

      aw shuddup

    • Neo

      Your logic is impeccably poor.

  • Evan S.

    Not sure how that Verizon MAX of 1.4 Mbps came to be. I got this on my Droid just the other night.
    http://www.speedtest.net/android/2746271.png
    Maybe they’re not counting 3G Rev. A?

    (The high ping was because of distance)

  • bayportbob

    it’s all about the phone. i don’t care about network speed on my phone as long as it is decent. if i can’t talk on my phone who gives a rip?!

    • bob

      and if you cant make calls without them dropping randomly who cares how fast it is?

  • Jay

    I don’t understand the point in posting comments about how great/horrible another network is. If you like your network, keep it. If it works for you, keep it. If you don’t like it, switch. In my area, Verizon coverage was always spotty and dropped out around town. AT&T doesn’t do that. I’m not a fan boy, and I’m not hating on Verizon and I’m not sleeping with AT&T. Point is, just use what you like.

  • Ace Curry

    They got a max download of 2.75 on AT&T? Once I got over 3! Don’t believe me- http://i878.photobucket.com/albums/ab348/hustlindaily/Speed/speedtest.png?t=1275715187

  • asleep

    Missed the 4th largest city in the country with some of the worst AT&T latency … pffft.

  • Marc Alam

    I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some under-the-table deal with PC Mag. And now they have based a multi-million dollar huge advertisement campaign based on this 1 report. Corporations do this all the time. They tested speed in 20 cities. All PCMag had to do is test their ATT cards right under the towers – find places where ATT has the best reception. Look at everyones comments here and talk to any iPhone user about their ATT network speed.

    • Austin Texan

      Rght on – AT&T must be paying PC Magazine off in advertising dollars. Another reason I’m no longer subscribing to PC Magazine.

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