A recent test run by the labs over at AT&T are showing that the speed of LTE mobile networks is actually double what companies are advertising at. AT&T labs were able to download at a speed of 28.87 in a test they held, but made sure to report that speeds will vary in a real world situation. AT&T has plans for its LTE network to go live sometime this summer. The test was setup to mimic a real world situation and the demo showed a 28MB download rate. Experts say that speed will drop without any doubt, once more users are connecting to the same cell tower throughout the day.
Many reports on the internet are announcing the speed and the test that was run, but spokesman over at AT&T are quick to say that it should not be expected in the real world. AT&T has not officially announced what the speeds will be at for their new LTE network. The 28MB download and 10MB upload speeds that were found during the test are almost double what Verizon Wireless advertises their speeds at. Verizon hits about 12MB for the download and only 5MB per second on the upload speed.
AT&T is going to test, test and test the LTE network before going live and that is based on what they say was a two day outage of Verizon’s network recently. Sources say they do not want to put the network online only have issues for their users. Experts say it would be wise not to advertise a faster speed in hopes of gaining subscribers because LTE is a new technology that has its bugs, could vary in speed and quality as more users start to use it. Given the way cell carriers go after each other’s service, it is likely AT&T is going to advertise a more reliable network than “the other guys”.
With all of that being said, it will be interesting how AT&T handles the situation. With the new technology there are many variables that can move the speed a quality around, it would not make good sense for a company to commit to any number. Most experts are saying that speeds on the LTE network can reach up to 30MB per second on download, but in real world conditions you can expect the average speed on the LTE network to be below 10MB, most likely half that when the towers are loaded.
