Apple:AT&T wins for data speed, Verizon for call reliability

Filed under: Business, Computer, electronics, software

Apple:AT&T wins for data speed, Verizon for call reliability

The iPhone 4S is available on three major carriers, leaving potential buyers to wonder whether AT&T, Verizon or Sprint is the better network choice.Comcast is on track to begin offering live television to subscribers’ iPads as long as they stay near their home cable boxes, executives for the cable giant said in interviews.Apple is a powerhouse of ingenuity, patenting ideas as soon as an engineer can scratch them down on paper (or iPad).

Around three dozen Apple patents made their way through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week alone.Here we share three of the most notable — one helps prevent cracked cover glass, another would deliver power to multiple devices with just a single adapter, and a third is a far-reaching location-based services patent that could keep Apple’s competitors on their toes.First off, Apple has come up with a solution for keeping the glass on the back of your iDevice from breaking in the event of a fall.

Pricing plans aside, carrier quality is a significant factor in anyone’s purchasing decision, and now consumers have hard data to help them choose: A just-released study reports AT&T is tops for fast data speeds, while Verizon is the most reliable when it comes to making phone calls.Obviously, the simplest solution would be to avoid glass screens altogether, but if glass is going to stay, it should be made more resilient.The average dropped-call rate for the entire mobile industry is 1.4 percent.

The tests found that Verizon dropped calls 2.1 percent of the time, while AT&T dropped 2.8 percent of calls and Sprint lost 3.7 percent of calls. Although Sprint dropped the most calls, it had the highest call quality on the uplink (outbound calls), while AT&T had the best downlink call quality (inbound calls).The original iPhone launched exclusively with AT&T, which was the sole carrier of the iPhone until Apple announced that Verizon would also begin carrying the iPhone 4 in January 2011.

With regard to maximum data speeds, AT&T led the pack at 6,047Kbps, with Verizon a distant second at 2,371Kbps, and Sprint crawling in last with only 1,767Kbps. It’s unclear, however, exactly where Metrico tested data bandwidth, and as any iPhone-toting San Francisco resident will tell you, data quality can be terrible in areas with high concentrations of tech geeks.Prior to the launch of the iPhone 4S, rumors swirled that the phone would land on Sprint, and ultimately proved true. Of the three carriers, Sprint is the only one that provides a true unlimited data plan.

Comments are closed.