There are constantly all sorts of reports coming out that compare the speeds of the different wireless networks in a variety of areas and cities. The most recent one comes from Apteligent, and they found that T-Mobile was the fastest in the US. Quoting that they found the magenta carrier to “edge out Verizon for the top spot as the fastest carrier in the US”. They also noted that T-Mobile had an average latency of about 299 ms. The slowest in the country? That would be US Cellular. Given that they are a regional carrier with a much smaller network and far less subscribers, this shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Worldwide, the test found that the slowest carriers are actually in Thailand, Brazil and Russia. With pings reaching the 600 and 700 range. While the fastest carriers are in France and South Korea. Now this isn’t surprising, well South Korea shouldn’t be. Given that they are home to Samsung and LG, both of which are huge tech companies and South Korea is typically in the news about how fast their networks are, particularly with LTE Advanced. The report also found that these two countries had speeds that were three to four times faster than the slowest countries – Thailand, Brazil and Russia.
Apteligent also did some interesting comparing between Boost Mobile and Verizon. Given that Boost Mobile is one of the cheapest MVNO’s out there, and Verizon is definitely the most expensive carrier in the US. They found that Verizon users are keeping their devices longer. This goes to show just how much technology isn’t advancing in recent years. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this information either. As many other reports have stated that users are waiting longer to upgrade their devices. Now the average upgrade is about every three years. Compared to almost every year just a few short years ago.
This last bit is perhaps the most interesting. Apteligent found that apps will run about 15% slower in the summer time. They explain that this is due to “the science behind the propagation of radio waves”. Basically, the humidity that we experience in the summer months cause degradation on signal strength, which can cause slight delays in data going from handsets to the tower and vice versa.