Friday, February 18, 2011

AT&T iPhone faster than Verizon in 3G tests

AT&T lost its exclusivity grip on the on the iPhone 4 when Verizon started carrying the Apple device earlier this month, but if it comes as any consolation, the wireless carrier won Ookla's head-to-head broadband tests, Wired reports. You may recognize Ookla as the team behind Speedtest.net, an online broadband metric. Ookla recently turned its attention to the iPhone 4 by compiling data from iPhone users who downloaded and ran the mobile version of Speedtest.

The average download speed on AT&T, as represented by 43,000 AT&T iPhone 4 owners, was 1,769Kbps and the average upload speed was 730Kbps. The former is twice as fast as was reported by Verizon's 14,000 customers, whose average download speed was 848Kbps (average upload was 506Kbps).

"I think that's the story I expected to see," said Doug Sutties, co-founder of Ookla. "Verizon has never talked up their speed, but they always talk up their coverage and reliability. I think the story is quality versus throughput. What are you after?"

[via MaimumPC & OSXDaily]

3 comments:

Mike.com said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike.com said...

After anticipating this for years, I ordered a Verizon iPhone as soon as it became available. ATT has no signal where I work, so that was not an option. Verizon works so well around town here that I have my pages sent directly to my phone. Not carrying a pager is very very nice.

Anywho, I knew that Verizon would be slower, but we have a good WiFi network at work and I obviously have one at home. So the only time Verizon's slower network effects me is when I'm not at work or home. I can surf and talk when connected to WiFi, so the lack of cellular multitasking doesn't really bother me, either. Overall, it's what I expected, and I'm a happy customer. And the Valentine's Day sales on games came at the perfect time.

Mike.com said...

I just tried turning off WiFi and playing a Netflix (or Nutflex as my mother-in-law pronounces it) movie. It's smooth and high quality. I'm pleasantly surprised.