4G Networks: Who’s Fastest?

There’s a lot of hype surrounding 4G, especially with Verizon touting its LTE network, Sprint reversing its fortunes with its 4G Android phones, and T-Mobile imitating Apple ads with an Anne Hathaway lookalike to try and keep up. But who has the fastest network? PC World ran the tests, and the results might surprise you.

The writers tested two classes of products: smartphones and USB modems, like the one Verizon keeps lodging in a tree. In the modem category, Verizon does indeed reign supreme, with nearly twice the download speed of the second-place finisher, T-Mobile, at 6MB and five times the upload speed, at 5MB. So we guess flinging your products into plants really does help.

But before Verizon celebrates, it might want to look at the smartphone category…where it came in dead last. T-Mobile whipped the field with more than twice Verizon’s download speed, at 2.28 MB, and was nearly 1MB ahead of the closest competitor…Sprint, believe it or not. Still, there’s not much to crow about in the upload category; no smartphone, not even T-Mobile’s, could crack 1MB of upload speed, although the T did get close with .95MB.

The moral of the story? 4G is marketing speak: pay attention to the tests instead. You can find all the data in PCWorld’s detailed report.