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.