The fastest 4G LTE connections in the Raleigh metro area belong to AT&T, according to a new study by PC Magazine.
AT&T beat out Verizon in the magazine’s test in the Raleigh area and nationwide. While both AT&T and Verizon offered consistently fast speeds, PC World says that AT&T’s higher download speeds and faster Web page download speeds gave it the edge in Raleigh over Verizon’s slightly better uploads and reliability.
PC Magazine tested the networks of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless in 30 markets throughout the country. PC Magazine said that while AT&T beat Verizon overall on speed, Verizon tested better on reliability. T-Mobile’s network tested well, but was not as widely available. Sprint did not test as the top carrier in any market but the company is still transitioning from obsolete WiMax to a new LTE system.
“While none of the wireless carriers offers a perfect 4G experience, they’re all working hard and delivering better networks than they did last year,” PC Magazine said.
The impact of Sprint’s transition to LTE is particularly evident in Raleigh and PC Magazine points to the Capital City as a prime example of LTE’s importance to Sprint’s strategy. Sprint’s 3G network had performed poorly in PC World’s tests. But in PC World’s test of the carrier’s new LTE network, Sprint showed itself to have the fastest Web page downloads of any of the major networks. Raleigh was also Sprint’s fastest LTE city overall with 11.8 Mbps average downloads, the magazine found.
“If you’re on a Sprint 3G phone in Raleigh, it’s very much worth upgrading,” PC Magazine said.
Sprint this week announced that its 4G LTE network was up and running throughout the Triangle. With the announcement, Sprint boasted it had 4G LTE in 110 markets nationwide. That’s still short of AT&T, which claims 4G LTE availability in 278 markets covering more than 200 million people. Verizon says its 4G LTE network is in 497 U.S. markets and covers 287 million people.
