Verizon 4G Wows With Speed Tests, Results

• Rob Jackson
• 14 years ago

For the impatient, my Verizon 4G has been consistently reporting 28 Mb/s. Read on for details.

Just before 2010 turned into 2011, I had the pleasure of getting a Verizon 4G LTE Modem to test. I’m currently a Verizon Mi-Fi customer and I absolutely love the service, using it often, and when I do it tends to be a godsend. But I would REALLY be putting Verizon 4G to the test: I used it as a primary method of reporting from CES 2011. We had heard reports it was snappy, but I was eager to put it through the paces.

With the hectic pace of press conferences and events, I wasn’t able to perform proper speed tests, but I didn’t need them to know that Verizon 4G was overachieving my expectations. Two factors led me to this conclusion:

• Reliable. Even considering we were at a tech conference with nearly everyone pounding away at their web connection, Verizon 4G successfully grabbed a signal in the depths of the convention center.
• Fast. I didn’t conduct a thorough speed test review, but I will tell you this: in many press conferences I had recorded and published YouTube videos from the event before the press conference was even over. Coincidentally, a great example was the Verizon event where I published a video of Verizon’s announcement of their full 4G device lineup and also HTC CEO Peter Chou announcing the HTC Thunderbolt.

I’ve been back home for a couple weeks now but with trips to New York City and elsewhere on the horizon, I’ve been thinking about how nice it would be to have Verizon 4G on the go. Remembering I hadn’t actually performed many speedtests, I thought now would be a good time. And yes, I was wowed.

First I tested my desktop- a hardwired Comcast connection: 20.81 Mb/s Down, 3.41 Mb/s up

Then I moved onto Comcast Wi-Fi on my laptop: 18.91 Mb/s down, 3.27 Mb/s up.

Now  you would EXPECT Verizon 4G to come in significantly lower than the wired connection and Wi-Fi connection, right? That’s what I thought. But Verizon 4G repeatedly outperformed BOTH:

That’s absolutely absurd in the most awesome way possible. Keep in mind that these aren’t just one-and-off results. Each of the above tests I performed 10 to 20 times to make sure I didn’t have any awkward outliers. That being said, I found that using the server in Baltimore, MD – where I am based – contributed to the outrageously high results.

By switching server locations and repeating the same Verizon 4G speed tests from various places around the United States, I was able to achieve the following (ballpark) speeds on average: 13 Mb/s down, 4 Mb/s up.

That’s still amazingly fast and now I understand how YouTube was zipping through my video uploads at CES. By comparison, when loading up SpeedTest.net on my Verizon Droid X I got the following results on average:

• 2.5 Mb/s down
• 1 Mb/s up

Not too great for Verizon 3G, but Verizon 4G is ridiculously lightning fast… at least for now. Even if the 27.5 downstream is some kind of glitchy anomaly, 13 Mb/s is nothing to scoff at either.

At the moment, Verizon is weening the 4G program along, and rightfully so. Right now the only 4G devices they have available for sale are USB modems and mobile hotspotsand – as you can imagine that these have limited circulation. Once the first Android Phone(s) with Verizon 4G are made available, a huge influx of data users will be hammering the service, likely dropping the effective data speed of the entire 4G network. And THEN, don’t forget, it’s very likely we’ll be seeing a Verizon iPhone with 4G LTE speeds in the near-to-mid future.

Right now? I’m loving Verizon 4G. Can it scale? Time will tell. But if I had to put my money on one company to build a 4G network that scales in reliability and speed… it would be Verizon. I’m impressed by the initial performance and can’t wait for these first 4G phones to launch so we can see how Verizon’s LTE network does when really put to the test.

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