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T's network famously choked on the iPhone, and Verizon has a reputation as more reliable. But Darren Murph at Engadget tested the performance of U.S. mobile data and found that AT&T is typically delivering twice the download speed of the other carriers. His work seems reasonably careful; perhaps T's upgrades are finally doing their job. “AT&T's download rates obliterate the other guys. Seriously, it's not even close.” AT&T came close to 2 megabits down “across a variety of urban, suburban and rural locales.” Upstream rates were all around half a meg, and latency also similar, about 150 milliseconds.

Until Verizon deploys LTE, T will be much faster and they already are moving speeds higher. That means VZ will be behind most places until 2011 or 2012, then should jump ahead. Murph is cruel about the business side, calling the current 5GB plans “capped” (true) and preposterous. He also points out the limits of 4 player competition “In a fashion that only a colluder could love, the big four here in America all have matching monthly rate plans with matching monthly caps (5GB). So much for choice, right?”