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AT&T Not Full Of It

Posted by BLin on February 24th, 2010

AT&T has obviously been wounded by Verizon’s “Map” commercials.  They’ve been firing back with some speed claims that I’m sure most people didn’t take seriously.

But now there’s some evidence to back up the claim.  PCWorld has released it’s second round of speed test data taken between December 2009 and January 2010 in 13 cities, and the title of the story sums it up: “AT&T Roars Back in PCWorld’s Second 3G Wireless Performance Test.”

They also tested network/smartphone pairs, and AT&T/iPhone was the best performer.  PCWorld had this to say about the Verizon/Droid pair:

Our smartphone-based tests revealed some significant performance limitations of the Verizon network when we connected to it with a Motorola Droid. [...]

Overall, the Droid delivered an average upload speed of just 116 kbps, the lowest average of any carrier/phone combo in our smartphone tests. And in numerous tests using the Droid, we recorded upload speeds of less than 75 kbps–painfully slow if you’re trying to send data of any size up through the network.

We also had trouble establishing a reliable connection between the Verizon network and the Droid during our tests. Verizon delivered an uninterrupted signal at reasonable speed in only 76 percent of our tests–far below the success rates of the 90+ percent that the other three carriers achieved.

Download speeds to the Droid, on the other hand, were quite good, at an average of 1075 kbps; that’s not far from the upper end of the speed range that Verizon promised its customers, and ranks as the second-highest average download speed in our smartphone-based tests–behind only AT&T.

Now I may be an Apple fanboy, but I am definitely not an AT&T fanboy.  Their regular phone service has always been lackluster for me (just try calling me in my kitchen; I dare you), but this bit of news is kind of refreshing to see.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Some Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

6 Responses to “AT&T Not Full Of It”

  1. February 24th, 2010 at 2:23 pm

    beej says:

    ATT has been and will continue to frantically increase their tower bandwidth by connecting more lines to each tower and taking advantage of existing WiFi networks with their “mesh.” What this means is in the short-term ATT is responding well to the iPhone overload.

    In the long-term ATT may be in trouble. They pretty much had no choice but to go frantic with the iPhone craziness. Verizon is switching their network over to LTE which is sometimes referred to as 3.9G (though all the marketing will sell it as true 4G).

    Apparently afraid of losing the iPhone to Verizon, ATT has hinted they might be accelerating their own LTE plans. As in start testing this year, maybe next. We’ll just have to wait and see.

    What I like is that this is true, gritty, serious mobile competition. Sure, they both seem unwilling to flinch on price, but the speed wars are on for real. And at least between Verizon and ATT right now it truly is a war. This isn’t fake, play competition. It’s serious.

  2. February 24th, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    beej says:

    PS, poor Luke Wilson. ATT makes him look like such a douchebag in those commercials. Verizon’s tone was all poking fun, ATT’s tone comes off as bratty and arrogant.

  3. February 24th, 2010 at 5:44 pm

    rob says:

    @Beej

    Dude, do you have any sources regarding AT&T expanding their coverage via the addition of more lines and the like, as well as them accelerating their plans for LTE?

    I believe you, I’m just curious to see the articles.

  4. February 24th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    beej says:

    http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?cdvn=news&newsarticleid=30493&pid=4800

    The source is themselves. So…. whether or not it actually happens we’ll see, but they are claiming it. The release also mentions the tower upgrades for more bandwidth (fiber overhaul coming soon).

  5. February 24th, 2010 at 5:54 pm

    rob says:

    Thanks dude, much appreciated. I guess we’ll see if they actually follow through…but as you yourself stated earlier, this is serious competition, so AT&T has a reason to be investing in their own infrastructure:

    FTA:

    “AT&T wireless network investment plans for 2010 also include construction of about 2,000 new cell sites and adding new radio controllers and carriers at a pace that doubles deployment in 2009.”

  6. February 24th, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    eric says:

    This actually doesn’t totally surprise me. I always win google map races against people with Blackberries. There was a time where my 3G connection was more actually reliable than my Time Warner internet…go figure…

    AT&T’s phone reliability is really what’s lacking, I think–and I think people (myself included for a time) lump their phone and internet troubles together when they voice complaints about their AT&T service.

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