Which US Carrier Has the Fastest 4G Speed? Depends on What You Look At

Whether it’s AT&T or Verizon that claims your loyalty, everyone likes to believe they’re getting the best LTE/3G speeds available. But if you find yourself in an intense debate any time soon, be careful what sources you cite while trying to support your claim that Verizon or AT&T is superior. As seen in a few recent tests, the argument about data speeds is very much ongoing, and also dependent on a few factors.

To put it simply, AT&T wins the LTE speed battle on paper when it comes to the all-important download speed, as their average was 9.12Mbps. However, Verizon does beat AT&T with upload speed at 5.86 Mbps. Verizon is also quick to point out what Bill Moore of RootMetrics has to say on the matter:

“While AT&T outperformed Verizon in pure LTE download speeds, Verizon had the clear upper hand in the more meaningful real-world experience of average download and upload speeds. AT&T’s LTE might be faster, but our overall experience with AT&T was still slower than what we found with Verizon.”

There you have it—the “more meaningful real-world experience” offered by Verizon is said to be better than the competition from AT&T, but should new customers trust that interpretation or go by what the graphs say?

In other news, Sprint and T-Mobile didn’t really place in the competition, though that should change in the coming year as both carriers get their LTE services off the ground.

About the Author

Devin Wieland

 

Best Free Apps of the Day!