ATT wins in iPhone, data stick tests

AT&T today landed a surprise win in a new test of 3G performance in the US. The carrier had both the fastest average download speeds, at 1.4Mbps, and the fastest uploads, at 773Kbps. Both were major improvements and were as much as 84 percent faster than what was seen a year earlier. T-Mobile and Verizon were only periodically able to crest 1Mbps while Sprint would only come close to the mark.

In testing, PCWorld also claims to have addressed the common complaints of reliability with AT&T's network and says it drew even with Sprint with an average of 94 percent reliability on 3G over 13 cities, including known problem spots like New York City and San Francisco. However, data quality was noticeably lower in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, where reliabilty was below average at 85 to 90 percent.

Smartphones were equally tested to reflect the performance limits on the devices, including a combination of networks with their flagship devices. The iPhone trailed slightly behind in reliability at 91 percent, but had the fastest speeds of just under 1.3Mbps down and 215Kbps up; the Motorola Droid on Verizon came second in download speeds at 1.1Mbps but was the worst for average upload speed, at 116Kbps, and particularly below average for reliability. Just 76 percent of its connections worked properly, testers said. The HTC Hero at Sprint was the second most consistent with 851/145Kbps speeds and 92 percent stability; T-Mobile's G1 was the slowest overall at 719/134Kbps but was the most reliable at 93 percent.

The T-Mobile test is potentially outdated as it centers on the slowest phone of the collection; the fastest native phone on T-Mobile is the Nexus One.

AT&T's improvement doesn't completely address ongoing complaints about speed or stability in some cities but does follow a set of emergency upgrades conducted across the carrier's network. Much of 2009 was spent adding capacity and specifically adding 850MHz 3G support that provided much more spectrum in areas that were heavily oversaturated. Some areas also have 7.2Mbps HSPA and give AT&T a distinct advantage over most EVDO connections.

While it's not clear how the iPad, Android phones and others will affect AT&T's quality of service, the examination casts partial doubt on Verizon's claims that it could handle the iPhone without significant upgrades if the Apple handset became available on the network. Performance is also likely to change significantly in the next year as the rollouts of HSPA+ at T-Mobile, LTE at Verizon and WiMAX at Sprint could skew the maximum speeds on either 3G or 4G. AT&T isn't expected to implement 4G until 2011.

By Electronista Staff