Looking for the fastest wireless network in Seattle? Look no further than Verizon, which easily trounced its rivals in terms of upload and download speeds in recent tests. Verizon, which has been expanding its LTE network throughout the Pacific Northwest in the past year, also beat out its competitors in terms of text message delivery.
According to a new report by RootMetrics, Verizon clocked an average upload speed of 7.8 Mbps, distancing itself from the second place finisher, T-Mobile, which tabulated 1.6 Mbps. Verizon also clocked an average download speed of 12.5 Mbps, above T-Mobile’s 9.7 Mbps.
“While T-Mobile trailed Verizon when comparing average download speed, these carriers recorded very similar percentages of their download tests at speeds greater than 5 Mbps, a threshold we feel easily qualifies as “4G” speed,” the report said. Both T-Mobile and Verizon saw speeds above 5 Mbps 71 percent of the time.
AT&T ranked third, with average upload speeds of 1.3 Mbps and average download speeds of 3.8 Mbps. Sprint was at the bottom of the four major carriers, with average upload speeds of 0.8 Mbps and average download speeds of 1.9 Mbps. Sprint also recorded the greatest percentage of download speeds below 1.5 Mbps, doing so in 63.3 percent of tests.
It also ranked poorly in terms of text message delivery, with 32 percent of text messages taking more than a minute to reach their destination, and call performance, showing a 3.8 percent call failure rate.
