Engadget US LTE Speed Test Article

Galen

Verizon LTE Speed Test: Insanely Fast

Verizon's first LTE dongle is startlingly large. But not as startling as the speed.
These results are spot tests from all across the country: New York (Gizmodo & Engadget), Seattle (MSNBC.com), Philadelphia (GigaOM), Arizona (SlashGear) and Boston (NetworkWorld). And they paint a pretty remarkable picture. Most of the "slow" results—around 7-9Mbps downstream—are with a mere two bars of signal. MSNBC.com's crazy, fiber-fast speeds? Totally legit, Verizon told MSNBC.com super editor and Coors Light fanboy Wilson Rothman.
Our own results are from deep within Gizmodo HQ in SoHo in downtown Manhattan, the average of five speed tests. By comparison, our WiMax dongle from the same spot averaged a mere 2.7Mbps downstream and 2.8Mbps upstream, and the strength of the signal seemed a little shakier. LTE is the real deal—right now anyway, while there's nobody but lucky tech journos stealing all the internets. We'll have to see how well it holds up as more people pile on, but the initial results are stunning, to say the least.
The experience of getting it set up is a little less fabulous. It's Windows-only for now (changing soon, hopefully!), and Verizon's Access Manager is a terrible little piece of software which isn't even bundled on the dongle. The dongle itself is wide and bulbous, a return to the USB dongles of three years ago that eat up gobs of real estate on the side of your PC. (The Clearwire WiMax dongle is a classy affair by comparison, a metallic circle, drivers all neatly bundled.) Dear lord, we can't wait until there's an LTE MiFi card.
In the meantime, just be amazed at these speeds, finally available in America. Whether you wanna call it 4G or not, the bottom line is that it's damn fast. [Engadget, MSNBC.com, Slashgear, Network World, GigaOM]

oscarBravo

Galen wrote: »

LTE is the real deal—right now anyway, while there's nobody but lucky tech journos stealing all the internets.

Uh huh.

clohamon

The data caps need a bit of tweaking it seems.

Verizon's new 4G LTE network is so fast that you can use up your entire 5GB, $50 monthly allotment in 32 minutes.

I'm in the middle of testing Verizon's new LTE network, and the 2010-era speeds are soured by the 2005-era thinking on data plans. Verizon has priced LTE pretty much like 3G to encourage data sipping, not guzzling. As soon as you start using the latest high-bandwidth Internet services, your whole month's allotment can evaporate within a day.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373767,00.asp

Galen

Hi Paul, I doubt it's anything new to you but it's interesting to see some real world results even it is stateside and the most simplest of tests. Have a nice Xmas once the snow is gone.

oscarBravo

It will be a real-world test when it's rolled out and has hundreds of thousands of users contending for scarce spectrum. When that happens, I'll be interested to see the results.

watty

you already know how well it will do

5MHz Spectrum LTE



FOR ONE user....

the quoted system has 20MHz.

So multiply the speeds the ten users get by x4
Almost half of them only get about 1.5Mbps

If you have 20 simultaneous users then about 700kbps

Too many users connected? Then you can't get a connection.

1Mbps DSL is more reliable and consistent!

3Mbps Broadband is faster and more reliable than 100MBps LTE for most users.