PCMag Crowns AT&T Fastest Mobile Network Overall
Jun 20, 2019, 9:16 AM by Rich Brome @rbrome.bsky.social
PCMag has completed its annual nationwide test of mobile networks, and found that, for the first time in six years, AT&T's network is faster, on average, than Verizon's. AT&T won or tied in 15 out of 30 cities, and won or tied in every rural region. All four national networks improved year-over-year in both speed and reliability, but AT&T improved the most. PCMag's testing utilized a custom rig of Samsung Galaxy S10 phones driven across 30 major US cities and six rural areas. In each city, analysts stopped by more than a dozen locations, testing downloads, uploads, latency, reliability, and consistency every two minutes.
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Comments
Snore
With only 30 cities and 6 rural areas tested, I'd say this test is rather pointless. Speeds alone in the major cities, sure, but only 6 rural areas & they say the "rural speeds and coverage have improved"?? I'd like to see a couple hundred rural cities.
While I don't live extremely rural, I do live in the Eastern Washington/Northern Idaho region and many of our towns, rural especially, in the inland northwest aren't even covered by native AT&T. T-mobile and Verizon are the best providers in this area yet with a "national article" like this, one might be led to believe that AT&T is a great choice based on speeds alone, however, those speeds are very limited in these northern states due to lack of coverage.
While I don't live extremely rural, I do live in the Eastern Washington/Northern Idaho region and many of our towns, rural especially, in the inland northwest aren't even covered by native AT&T. T-mobile and Verizon are the best providers in this area yet with a "national article" like this, one might be led to believe that AT&T is a great choice based on speeds alone, however, those speeds are very limited in these northern states due to lack of coverage.
Not to mention, basic coverage (i.e., talk & text) isn’t as good as Verizon or Sprint. Everyone seems to have forgotten why we all bought cellphones in the first place: to be able to make emergency calls in the middle of nowhere.
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