LTE, 4G, 3G and EDGE on AT&T

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I happen to have a bunch of iPhones in my possession today, so I decided to do some cellular network bandwidth testing with them.

My goal was to see how different data network standards work on the phones in order to understand how performance has improved over time. Given the collection of devices I have on hand, I could readily test four different transports:

• "3G" (HSDPA) on the iPhone 4

• "EDGE" on the iPhone 4

• "LTE" on the iPhone 5

• "4G"(HSPA+) on the iPhone 5

Before we get started: There is a lot of chatter in terms of what "3G" and "4G" mean.  In short, they mean very little: EDGE is actually a 3G protocol.  LTE doesn't meet the specifications of the original ITU definition of the theoretical performance of "4G".

None of the terms suggest what a user will experience for minimum, average, or maximum bandwidth.

All that matters is actual performance, not theoretical maximums or labels.

The labels are useful only in providing a sense of possible performance.  On EDGE?  Expect less than on 3G, 4G, or LTE.   On 3G, 4G, or LTE?  Great!

The Results

All tests were performed over the AT&T network from a specific coffee table in my house.

These tests are not an average, they just were what I saw given one test.  If you test at a different place than I did, use different devices, use different software, and do your test at a different time than I did, you may get wildly different results.

That said, the results of these experiments gave me a general idea of the differences between the protocols.

EDGE: 0.15 Mbit download, 0.8 Mbit upload, 320ms ping

3G: 5.04 Mbit download, 1.13 Mbit upload, 86ms ping

4G: 9.41 Mbit download, 1.26 Mbit upload, 69ms ping

LTE: 28.6 Mbit download, 23.2 Mbit upload, 49ms ping.

Analysis

So what does this all mean?

EDGE is slow, similar to dialup speeds.  But if you have a small data plan, you could use EDGE to help reduce your bandwidth consumption.  EDGE may still be useful for plain-text email and other data-light applications.

3G is pretty decent.  With that kind of performance, it should be reasonable to download a large photo or song in less than 10 seconds.

4G was surprisingly fast.  The lore around the community is that 4G is just a slightly tweaked 3G experience and really not a step up.   But the reality is that this test showed that 4G can be nearly twice as fast as 3G. This is practically as fast as 10 Mbit ethernet and reasonably close to the actual throughput of a typical home 802.11g WIFI router.

LTE was definitely fastest.  This shouldn't be a huge surprise.  LTE was three times faster than 4G, six times faster than 3G, and 100+ times faster than EDGE.  With LTE, if you saturate your pipe, it seems possible to burn through your 300 MB data plan in a few minutes:

minutes/month = 300 MBytes/month ÷ ((28 Mbit/second ÷ 8 bits/byte) * 60 seconds/minute)
minutes/month = 1.43
Yes, it seems possible to burn through 300 MBytes in under two minutes!

Conclusion

Cellular network speeds have improved greatly over the past five years.  The largest leap was from EDGE to 3G.   LTE is fast, but it may not be so much faster that people really notice - except in overage charges.