Verizon 4G LTE Speed Test Results: POST EM' HERE!

[Joe12304]

When I first got clear service there was only one tower near my house in the burbs of Houston and now there are 5. Im not for or against clear or vz, just saying

That's great, but Sprint has a giant head start and still almost no 4G (or any other) coverage. They simply can't afford to build out like they need to.

[JoeyDee]

Well, between cashflow, AND a frequency that has almost twice the range as Sprints, verizon has a huge advantage coverage wise. PCS companies need almost 3 times the number of cell sites to cover the same area as cellular companies, so 700mhz vs 2500mhz is even worse.

Sprint I'm sure knows this though, and I think will build out to get into the home internet market. It would make too much sense to do it, they have tons of spectrum, they just need to dump tons of backhaul to the sites and advertise. . .

Here's a question for you guys. . . The LTE modems verizon has, and the WiMAX modems Sprint/Clear has. . . Does anyone know the max speed ratings on them? Like how HSPA is broken down to 3.6/7.2/14.4/21/42 etc. . . ? Just wondering what the bottleneck would be once they start putting gigabit lines in for backhaul. . .

[iansltx]

Re: the current Clear vs. VZ shouting match:

1. Clear has had their network around far longer than Verizon has. THus they have run into loading issues etc., whereas Verizon won't for another several months.
2. Clear is cheaper than Verizon.
3. Clear in-building coverage sucks in the areas that I've tried their service (Denver, San Antonio, Austin). Heck, their 2500MHz network will drop from 8 Mbps to 2 Mbps depending on where you're standing, and from a (capped) 1 Mbps up to 100 kbps. It's all due to using spectrum that's higher-end than WiFi.
4. Clear could blow the doors off if they had the money to do so. They can do multiple non-overlapping 20MHz channels of <LTE | WiMAX> and offer 20 Mbps or more with no caps, if they only had the money to put up more sites and backhaul all of them with E-Band equipment ($30k per link, gigabit).
5. Verizon has better coverage in whatever market they're in than Clear, straight up. That's what 700MHz spectrum does for you. They also happen to be more expensive than Clear.
6. I'll probably buy a LTE MiFi (the Samsung model) when it comes out, assuming I can get it for a decent price off-contract. That or a ChromeOS notebook with LTE built in. I already have a phone that can do WiMAX, a Sprint 3G aircard and an HSPA+ unit from T-Mobile that runs on AT&T as well, so with the LTE modem my collection will be complete.
7. If you're seeing 70ms latency on LTE, I have news for you: CDMA can do 90ms as long as you aren't getting bounced to kingdom come like Sprint does (resulting in latency of 110-150ms). Try out a CricKet aircard to see what I mean. Speeds are crappy, latency is great. On the GSM side, I've seen sub-50ms latency on T-Mobile. It helps that their network egress point for Denver is...well, Denver, and I was testing to a local server. But facts are facts, and where I sit right now AT&T is actually the fastest network (there's an LTE hole here oddly enough), though T-Mobile "feels" much more responsive. Sprint and Verizon 3G are about equal *shrugs*.

[Guest 171]

Verizon has never builtout a network from the Ground up before Fanboi....They've brought smaller networks and strung them together....can't do that with 4G because there are NO 4G networks to buy....AT&T another network with just as much cash as Verizon, is a perfect example of what happens when you don't have enough spectrum...AT&T took a serious beating in the media for slow data...and whattt'dya know they had to build their 3G network from the ground up as well....

So much for the "Knows how to build Networks" .....If you weren't such a Troll and Verzion A$$ Kisser you'd know this.

Again See me when Verizon has 2 really popular smartphones and 7-8 usb/mifi devices running 4G all on that "SHOE STRING" 700 mhz spectrum....

God for real, nobody else in here is impressed by Sprint. For goodness sakes, they are so pathetic they HAVENT EVEN FINISHED CO-LOCATING CDMA TO iDEN. AT&T even had the whole Alltel network they got divested up and running with 3G in just a few months from when they started,it's been a little of what, 4-5 years now? And look at their cheap pathetic WiMax coverage, it look's like a spider got murdered in her own web before it was finished. LTE is being built from the ground up, they already have the tower's, well so does Sprint. Oh WAIT they sold all their tower's and their network operations and outsource them because they are too poor to afford to do it themselves. If you weren't such a troll then you would realize how much Sprint sucks and how little anyone here care's. YOU Pay for what you get buddy.

And spectrum isn't everything, Clear/WiMax has only a measly 1million user's and they are already having capacity issue's, Verizon has prepared because they know they will have customers. Verizon could have 4x as many LTE customer's in a weekend LTE iPhone sale....

Please, nobody is and nobody here will be impressed by Sprint. I don't know what is wrong with everyone in the Sprint forum getting so defensive about Sprint because they have yet to do anything right unlike Verizon. Heck, Even little T-Mobile who had NO 3G 2 years ago is beating them out.

[Guest 171]

And what makes you think the same wont happen to Verizon once its LTE network is loaded.....again Call Verizon a winner if they maintain those speeds and consistency once that precious 700 mhz is fully loaded...

You can bash Sprint/Clear all day long....doesn't excuse the elephant in the room...

Do you even have your fact's straight, they own AWS as well to supplement capacity in urban area's.

[Joe12304]

Re: the current Clear vs. VZ shouting match:

1. Clear has had their network around far longer than Verizon has. THus they have run into loading issues etc., whereas Verizon won't for another several months.
2. Clear is cheaper than Verizon.
3. Clear in-building coverage sucks in the areas that I've tried their service (Denver, San Antonio, Austin). Heck, their 2500MHz network will drop from 8 Mbps to 2 Mbps depending on where you're standing, and from a (capped) 1 Mbps up to 100 kbps. It's all due to using spectrum that's higher-end than WiFi.
4. Clear could blow the doors off if they had the money to do so. They can do multiple non-overlapping 20MHz channels of <LTE | WiMAX> and offer 20 Mbps or more with no caps, if they only had the money to put up more sites and backhaul all of them with E-Band equipment ($30k per link, gigabit).
5. Verizon has better coverage in whatever market they're in than Clear, straight up. That's what 700MHz spectrum does for you. They also happen to be more expensive than Clear.
6. I'll probably buy a LTE MiFi (the Samsung model) when it comes out, assuming I can get it for a decent price off-contract. That or a ChromeOS notebook with LTE built in. I already have a phone that can do WiMAX, a Sprint 3G aircard and an HSPA+ unit from T-Mobile that runs on AT&T as well, so with the LTE modem my collection will be complete.
7. If you're seeing 70ms latency on LTE, I have news for you: CDMA can do 90ms as long as you aren't getting bounced to kingdom come like Sprint does (resulting in latency of 110-150ms). Try out a CricKet aircard to see what I mean. Speeds are crappy, latency is great. On the GSM side, I've seen sub-50ms latency on T-Mobile. It helps that their network egress point for Denver is...well, Denver, and I was testing to a local server. But facts are facts, and where I sit right now AT&T is actually the fastest network (there's an LTE hole here oddly enough), though T-Mobile "feels" much more responsive. Sprint and Verizon 3G are about equal *shrugs*.

1.)They have less coverage in that amount of time than Verizon has put out in one day.
2.)An '86 Dodge Omni is cheaper than a 2010 BMW 740.
3.)Yeah it's lame. Why did they ever think people would want something they have to stand outside to get?
4.)But they don't because they like Sprint are business failures. Business 101: be profitable.
5.)You get what you pay for. Verizon has more 4G nationwide now than Sprint does too.
6.)I already spend all my money to have a Droid every month
7.)The hell is Cricket. (Kidding, but they aren't within 100 miles of most people.)

[Joe12304]

God for real, nobody else in here is impressed by Sprint. For goodness sakes, they are so pathetic they HAVENT EVEN FINISHED CO-LOCATING CDMA TO iDEN. AT&T even had the whole Alltel network they got divested up and running with 3G in just a few months from when they started,it's been a little of what, 4-5 years now? And look at their cheap pathetic WiMax coverage, it look's like a spider got murdered in her own web before it was finished. LTE is being built from the ground up, they already have the tower's, well so does Sprint. Oh WAIT they sold all their tower's and their network operations and outsource them because they are too poor to afford to do it themselves. If you weren't such a troll then you would realize how much Sprint sucks and how little anyone here care's. YOU Pay for what you get buddy.

And spectrum isn't everything, Clear/WiMax has only a measly 1million user's and they are already having capacity issue's, Verizon has prepared because they know they will have customers. Verizon could have 4x as many LTE customer's in a weekend LTE iPhone sale....

Please, nobody is and nobody here will be impressed by Sprint. I don't know what is wrong with everyone in the Sprint forum getting so defensive about Sprint because they have yet to do anything right unlike Verizon. Heck, Even little T-Mobile who had NO 3G 2 years ago is beating them out.

Oh man I laughed.
HARD.
So right though. It's sad that Sprint is its own worst enemy. They just keep making terrible decisions that sink them further. They aren't even really much cheaper for their base smartphone plan. I pay $97 a month to Verizon. With Sprint it was $84. $13 is well worth it. Or $3 if you want their Whymax turds. Sprint nickel and dimes you more than any other carrier n the business. That "$69" goes up fast with their nasty little fees they tack on. The only thing worth looking at with Sprint is their prepaid. Virgin and Boost are great, if you somehow manage to stay in Sprint coverage. Sprint postpaid is just a ripoff. Plus they have 2 Whymax phones in what? 6 months? Big deal. I'd be interested to see how often the Sprint lover roams to Verizon. He should set his hone to home only if he loves Sprint so much....
Just imagine in the future when Verizon, at&t, T-Mobile, and the rest of the world are LTE. Think of all the great devices Sprint will get! I know if I were Motorola I would Much rather make phones for one tiny network with 45 million customers (and plummeting) over making a device for everyone else.

[ronaldheld]

Somewhat OT, but watch your data usage. I am finding it easy to do more with the higher download rates.

[zephxiii]

Yea, sprint going wimax seems like a bad idea. Their whole "available now" point to going with wimax is about to disappear.

It seems like Sprint has a history with bad decisions, starting with Nextel lol.

[Evan702]

Yea, sprint going wimax seems like a bad idea. Their whole "available now" point to going with wimax is about to disappear.

It seems like Sprint has a history with bad decisions, starting with Nextel lol.

When they merged with Nextel, to comply with the FCC's decision to allow them to keep all of their 2.5GHz spectrum with zero divestiture, they had to have a broadband network in place that covered X number of Pops by the end of 2009 and even more by the end of 2010. Simply put, WiMAX was ready and LTE wasn't so their hand was pretty much forced on that issue.

[mmaximus]

SE Metro Denver (Arapahoe and Parker)
22.45 down
6 up
140ms latency

This is with 2 bars of signal on the Pantech. I should also note that I'm in a metal building not known for good cell reception.

[machaf]

sprint fanboi:

Profit Margin (ttm): -10.94%

Sprint's bleeding. They won't be around much longer. Screwed up big time going to whymax. Love the CEO in those stellar commercials.

[caleuche]

Well, between cashflow, AND a frequency that has almost twice the range as Sprints, verizon has a huge advantage coverage wise. PCS companies need almost 3 times the number of cell sites to cover the same area as cellular companies, so 700mhz vs 2500mhz is even worse.

Sprint I'm sure knows this though, and I think will build out to get into the home internet market. It would make too much sense to do it, they have tons of spectrum, they just need to dump tons of backhaul to the sites and advertise. . .

Here's a question for you guys. . . The LTE modems verizon has, and the WiMAX modems Sprint/Clear has. . . Does anyone know the max speed ratings on them? Like how HSPA is broken down to 3.6/7.2/14.4/21/42 etc. . . ? Just wondering what the bottleneck would be once they start putting gigabit lines in for backhaul. . .

On 10 MHz (per direction) the fastest SISO LTE mode will allow for 50 mbps per direction (raw, not payload) with the current antenna configuration (I believe). It's pretty unrealistic to imagine most people will ever see this as it relies on a high order modulation (64QAM) and code rate (35/36?), but if we're talking theoretical there you are.

The advantage clear presently has is difficult to see at the moment but they do have three frequency sectors per spatial sector per tower (eg, 3x10 MHz frequency sectors per 120º spatial sector for 9x 10 MHz sectors per tower) and if they want to they could go about adding additional frequency sectors. This doesn't give any single user an advantage but does allow a given tower to support a lot more users, but from the other side of the coin VZW could upgrade their towers to 4x4 MIMO for a fairly significant increase in per-spatial-sector bandwidth as well.

WiMax and LTE technologies from a radio standpoint aren't all *that* different and it comes down to who has the better spectrum and who has more spectrum. 700 MHz has significantly better propagation characteristics than 2.5-2.6 Ghz (~10 dB/km sort of thing) but with so much spectrum available clear could get a similar gain by using more robust code rates (and thus more spectrum) for the same end user available bandwidth.

[iansltx]

Okay, now I'm going to defend Sprint...

1. Where WiMAX works it's 4-8 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up...and I can pull down data all day and not run into $10 per GB overages.
2. T-Mobile has more HSPA+ coverage than SPrint has WiMAX, which in turn is more prevalent than Verizon LTE, though the diference isn't by much. Sprint has less coverage in some areas, but Verizon doesn't cover whole swaths of territory (Austin for example) that Sprint and T-Mobile both do.
3. Indoor WiMAX coverage is dodgy, sure. Add more towers or turn up the power and the problem resolves itself.
4. Verizon is going to try to do home broadband with LTE soner or later. With 700MHz they'll have no problem reaching people, however they just don't have enough spectrum to do that without caps and overages. Sprint OTOH does. That's why their uncapped speed, uncapped transfer Clear WiMAX home broadband package is $45 per month, and Verizon doesn't have any such thing.
5. The number of roaming minutes that I use on Sprint per month can be counted on...wait for it...zero hands most months. Otherwise, it's a few MB of data and a few voice minutes. This is out of several hundred MB (or maybe a GB or two) of data and maybe 500 minutes overall used on my phone. In short, if my plan was $5 cheaper per month in return for $1 per MB data and 20 cent per minute voice roaming, I'd come out ahead.

As for CricKet, you'd be surprised how much territory they actually cover. Look them up sometime. Not to be confused with MetroPCS, which works well in the markets that it covers but doesn't really serve a crazy-huge geographical area. Then again, CricKet isn't Alltel...

[lennyj17]

Do you even have your fact's straight, they own AWS as well to supplement capacity in urban area's.

BUT THEIR NOT PUTTING AWS IN LTE DEVICES YOU IDOT!!!

LTE WILL BE PURE 700mhz and once its loaded Verizon will suffer....Unless they charge OUT THE A$$ which we know they will....

Stop being a Fanboi and get YOU'RE FACTS STRAIGHT....Seriously HOFO needs to rename itself the VERIZON FANBOI'S Forums...Nothing but Verizon fanbois everywhere Trolling every forum....