3G and 4G Wireless Speed Showdown: Which Networks Are Fastest?
We tested 3G and 4G wireless data transfer speeds—indoors and out—for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, at multiple locations in 13 major cities. Here's what we found. — It's been a year since we looked closely …
Context & Ripple Effects
This test is the latest entry in a benchmark series that has become an annual fixture of the carrier wars: Gizmodo's coast-to-coast 3G data test set the template in December 2008, and PC Magazine repeated the exercise in June 2011 with its Fastest Mobile Networks survey. What changed by spring 2012 is that '4G' now means three different technologies across the four carriers — Verizon's LTE against AT&T's and T-Mobile's HSPA+ flavors and Sprint's WiMAX — making an apples-to-apples indoor/outdoor comparison across 13 cities genuinely contested ground.
The timing matters for AT&T specifically. The carrier is days into what it calls its biggest product introduction ever, a $150 million Lumia Windows Phone launch outspending even its own iPhone pushes, so independent network numbers feed directly into that pitch. Its simultaneous move to unlock off-contract iPhones is also nudging customers toward comparing carriers on merit rather than handset exclusivity.
First-order effects
- AT&T's Lumia 900 campaign rests on network-quality claims, so its showing in this 13-city test either arms or undermines the biggest product introduction it says it has ever run.
Second-order effects
- Carriers exposed as slow in specific metros face pressure to accelerate their own LTE buildouts there, and all four gain or lose a citable third-party statistic for advertising during a period when '4G' branding covers incompatible technologies.
Third-order effects
- If the annual-test pattern holds, network speed benchmarks become the de facto scoreboard of the 4G transition, shifting carrier competition from exclusive handset lineups toward measured performance — and inviting scrutiny of how loosely each network uses the '4G' label.
The trend: Independent multi-city speed tests are hardening into an annual scoreboard through which the four national carriers compete during the industry's fragmented 3G-to-4G transition.