Not all 3G wireless networks are created equal

Over the next year, it will become obvious that the iPhone and the Blackberry aren't the only cool smartphones on the market. New models such as the Palm Pre and a wave of new Android-based units will emerge to compete for the many consumers who haven't yet caught the smartphone bug. Mr. Smartypants is one such consumer; and when he goes shopping for a phone, he asks a lot of questions that any smart smartphone shopper should. Some of these questions are about the phone itself; others relate to the network that will connect the phone to the Internet.

Smartypants: How many cell towers do you have in town?

Store rep: Umm. I'll have to call the main office to get that.

Smartypants: About how many wireless subscribers does each cell tower support?

Store rep: Oh, yeah, I, uh...I don't think the company gives out those numbers.

Smartypants: Is the chipset in this phone optimized for the flavor of 3G service you're selling-you know, 1xEvDO Rev 0 or Rev A? HSPA or HSDPA+?

Store rep: Yes! This phone does have a very large screen!

Smartypants: What kind of wireless backhaul does the network use? Fiber?

Store rep: Well, see here, on the screen, if all five of these little bars are lit up, that means it's, uh, backhauling well...and those bars are always lit up!

Smartypants: Can this phone be converted to connect to a 4G network when one becomes available? And by the way, when will you offer 4G service here in town?

Store rep: Look, buddy—Sprint's right across the street. Go bother them.

It may seem as though Mr. Smartypants was just dipping into his knowledge base to give the store rep the needle, but all of his questions focus on issues that can dramatically affect a 3G network's performance. Wireless companies ought to be ready and willing to provide accurate answers to these questions. Why? Because their customers have a right to know what they're buying.

How we tested and what the ratings mean
We decided to test the three major 3G cellular wireless broadband providers in 13 U.S. cities that we judged to be broadly representative of the locales where most customers are likely to use these services. In each city, we randomly chose 20 test locations, evenly distributed over the metropolitan area. We performed all of our tests inside a parked car.

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We created a 1-minute stress test to evaluate the quality and performance of the wireless service. We tested network delay, upload speed, download speed, and reliability, as well as the correlation between "bars of service" and network performance.

We conducted the tests using industry-standard wireless-testing software (Ixia Chariot) running on a Windows XP SP3 laptop. We tested on a laptop, rather than on a smartphone, because we needed the laptop's processing power to run Ixia's rigorous 1-minute tests, and because a laptop can test the strengths and weaknesses of the network more accurately than a cell phone can. To connect to each network, we used the latest USB modem from each vendor: AT&T's USBConnect Option Quicksilver, Sprint's Sierra Wireless USB 598, and Verizon Wireless's Novatel Wireless USB 727. All of the client adapters we used came from the respective vendors and were recommended by the outlets where we purchased them.

Test definitions
Download speed: the average speed (in kilobits per second) at which we downloaded random data from a known Internet server during a 1-minute streaming test.

Upload speed: the average speed (in kilobits per second) at which we uploaded random data to a known Internet server during a 1-minute streaming test.

Reliability: the percentage of tests for a given city in which we could detect a signal, connect at a reasonable speed (faster than dial-up), and sustain an uninterrupted connection for the duration of a 1-minute streaming test.

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