Monday, June 27, 2011

Verizon's 4G network fastest in Charlotte, study says



Verizon's 4G wireless network is the fastest in Charlotte, according to a new study out today from PCMag.com. The survey, the second in an annual series from the respected tech magazine and website, includes road-testing of eight networks from six wireless carriers across 21 cities and four rural regions.


Verizon's 4G LTE won in 20 of the 21 cities, making it king of the digital hill in the PCMag.com test. It logged average download speeds topping 12 Mbps in Charlotte. That, the magazine notes, is faster than most people's home internet connection. All four of the major carriers' 4G networks did well in Charlotte, the study found.

The magazine did the research by driving around and making phone calls on Android 2.2-powered phones. The fastest Verizon spot the researchers located in Charlotte was just "east of Midtown" (meaning the old Midtown mall?), where they got 31 Mbps download speeds. T-Mobile came in second in Charlotte.

The results will perhaps confirm what my friends on AT&T have long suspected. But the AT&T guys, no longer blessed by their long monopoly on the iPhone, are running hard to build up their network in Charlotte. We'll see what happens in the long haul.

I say it's just good to have head-to-head numbers being published openly. Most of the network performance data nationally either comes from the carriers themselves or from researchers who sell the data to the carriers. In both cases, consumers rarely, if ever, get to see city-by-city performance data, and thus have no sure way of knowing which network is better. Given how intensely competitive the wireless industry is today, I'm sure the carriers who didn't come out on top here will say they still don't.









6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only thing faster is the technogeek twittering and blogging.

Anonymous said...

Yeah Eric, I'm so glad that you have another Pro-Verizon story. Do you cruise the web in search of them or what. How is that 4g working on that Verizon IPhone anyway? Funny how you always throw in useless facts that have nothing to do with the story at hand. Now go back to surfing on your MiFi.

Anonymous said...

Just got the "Charge" last week. Great phone and 4g is fast. Battery is better than Thunderbolt, but if run apps during the day you get about 6 hrs.
Just phone and text about 18 hrs.

Anonymous said...

I think the study is a bit flawed. 1) it's LTE so it's newer tech. It's supposed to be faster. 2) how many people are on Verizon's 4G network? That bandwidth is being spread among fewer people so again, its going to be faster. 3) the smallish footprint for 4g isn't discussed. A few miles outside of the city and you can kiss those speed goodbye. More telling is how poorly Sprint's Wi-Max implementation fared among those listed. And the fact that in an apples to apples comparison, T-Mobile is faster than AT&T.

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