Archive for category Sprint

Sprint Upgrades the iPhone to 4G in New Commerical (Video)

Mar 20

Posted by Alan in News, Sprint, iPhone 4G | 2 Comments

In a new commercial, Sprint takes a shot at AT&T’s 3G network while also introducing its Overdrive 4G WiFi Hotspot ($49), a small portable device that creates a WiFi hotspot anywhere you go using Sprint’s 3G/4G networks. A character in the commercial states:

My friend Steve’s iPhone’s cool, but it’s limited to AT&T’s 3G speeds, so I’m going to use the Overdrive 4G mobile hotspot to make it up to 10X faster.”

Steve proceeds to connect his iPhone to the 4G WiFi hotspot and exclaims “Woah” as streaming video appears.

I have Sprint’s 4G network in Chicago, called Clear, and my 4G laptop card is rarely faster than AT&T’s 3G network on my iPhone—although my larger Clear 4G home modem does get speeds up to 3.5mbps. But that’s still hardly revolutionary. I like the wireless nature of the 4G service, and it’s a good deal, as I pay $50 a month and get both home and mobile wireless 4G broadband for my laptop. I’m just somewhat disappointed that the speeds aren’t faster than last generation broadband.

AT&T Wireless Bests Verizon In Download Speeds As Upgrades Begin to Pay Off

Feb 24

Posted by Alan in AT&T Wireless, News, Sprint, Verizon | 1 Comment

8 months after performing dismally in nationwide testing of the major US 3G networks by PC World and Novarum, Inc, AT&T Wireless has seemingly made true on its promise to upgrade its network to better compete with other major wireless carriers. In fact, according to PC World‘s latest study, AT&T blew right past them.

In the study, which comprised 51,000 separate tests in 13 cities across the US, AT&T’s 3G network averaged download speeds of 1420 kbps, which gives them a hefty lead over second place finisher Verizon, which averaged 877 kbps. In third was T-Mobile with 868 kbps, and then Sprint with 795 kbps.

AT&T also dramatically improved the reliability of their network. The newest study had AT&T’s network providing a usable broadband connection 94% of the time, up from a last-place 68% reliability in the previous study.

Verizon, which previously had been commonly regarded to have the all-around best 3G network, saw its download performance decline by 8%. The number should be troublesome for Verizon, as according to PC World, only 15% of Verizon’s customer own smartphones, compared with AT&T’s 40 percent. The sheer number of iPhones on AT&T’s network has long been blamed for the company’s poor bandwidth performance.

Verizon responded to PC World by saying that the study’s numbers didn’t match Verizon’s own testing, and that it’s Verizon’s consistency, coverage, and reliability that sets their network apart.

The cities included in the testing were Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.

In PC World‘s smartphone testing, which utilized the iPhone, Droid, and other popular smartphones, AT&T took the download speed crown in 9 of the 13 cities. Baltimore had the highest average download speeds at 1686 kbps. Denver was the worst performer at 778 kbps.

AT&T’s upload performance for smartphones was even more impressive, winning in 12 of the 13 cities. Overall, AT&T averaged a 773 kbps upload speed, which is 330 kbps faster than second place finisher Verizon at 443 kbps.

Link: PC World “AT&T Roars Back in PCWorld’s Second 3G Wireless Performance Test”

Rumor: AT&T To Lose iPhone Exclusivity?

Jan 25

Posted by Tim Barribeau in AT&T Wireless, News, Sprint, Verizon | 1 Comment

Among the rumors swirling around this week’s Apple Tablet event are reports that AT&T may lose their stranglehold on the American iPhone market. HotHardware is reporting that they’ve talked to an AT&T insider who claims Ma Bell is losing iPhone exclusivity. They report that this will be announced during Wednesday’s Apple media event, though they didn’t say which company (or companies) would be picking up the slack.

Apparently, AT&T may not be “losing” exclusivity so much as gladly getting rid of it. The sources say the company isn’t fighting to retain the iPhone due to the network stress the popular phone has caused and the resulting complaints about AT&T’s network it has created. AT&T may be picking up a number of other smartphone devices in order to compensate for losing iPhone customers when exclusivity ends.

AT&T Wireless 3G Network Lags Competitors in Speed, Reliability

Jul 1

Posted by Alan in AT&T Wireless, Apple iPhone, Sprint, Verizon | 4 Comments

iPhone users may have another reason to dislike AT&T. Noting a lack of independent testing for wireless 3G networks, computer magazine PC World decided to test the 3G networks of major carriers Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T Wireless. Their tests included three areas: download speed, upload speed, and reliability.

The results? Verizon’s 3G network provided the best download speeds with an average 951 kbps. AT&T and Sprint came in at a virtual tie for second by averaging 812 and 808 kbps, respectively. But here’s the kicker for iPhone users: AT&T came in a distant last place for reliability of connection. PC World’s testers were able to maintain an uninterrupted signal only 68% of the time. This is in stark contrast to 90.5% for Sprint and 89.9% for Verizon. Ouch.

Another interesting note from the article:

In our tests of AT&T’s networks in four cities (New York, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose), the number of bars was not predictive of the service quality we saw; in the other nine cities in our study, the number of bars proved marginally useful in predicting how well our test experience would turn out.

So those little bars are lying to us, eh?

Link:

PC World “A Day in the Life of 3G”