Comparing 3G Networks

bsk_cw writes "Brian Nadel got hold of cellular network cards from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, and tried them out with a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 notebook. He watched videos on commuter trains, worked with e-mail at cafes, listened to Internet radio at the airport, and downloaded large files while in a moving car. AT&T came out on top in his tests in the New York area (summary here). Some of the reader comments report different conclusions, so a YMMV is in order."

Re:5GiB, $60

[mrbluze]

Is there much prospect of the price of wireless broadband becoming affordable? It's very irritating to have ubuquitous technology that practically nobody can afford (or is willing to spend that kind of money) to use.

Re:Not AT&T in North Texas

[Blahbooboo3]

Why not get a VOIP phone?

Re:It wasn't a fair comparison

[general_re]

I'm also a little skeptical of his bandwidth testing method. I've never heard the Alken site, and the tests I did right now on my own system aren't even close to my actual performance (although, maybe they're justing getting slammed with traffic).

Why would you choose a server in Norway to test the speed of a wireless connection in New York anyway? Are we testing the speed of the actual wireless network, or the peering arrangements for each provider across the North Atlantic?

Seems to me that you'd want to pick something a little closer, so as to test the actual speed of the provider's network, rather than the speed of the connection to Norway or South Africa or Mars or wherever. Alken just benchmarked my home connection at 1.6 Mbit down. Speakeasy's Washington DC [speakeasy.net] speed test server clocked me at 23.7 Mbit down - which one do you think is a better reading of my ISP's actual performance?

Re:What's the lag?

[Hal_Porter]

You can buy (more) bandwidth, but you can't buy (less) latency.