Here’s a quick speed test I did at center of San Francisco city inside the Japan Town mall with all 4 U.S. major carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon.
First, I was able to pick up good 4G LTE signals on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon while Sprint does not get 4G LTE signals in most areas except downtown and close to highways.
The result?
AT&T has the fastest download/upload speeds followed by T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint.
Verizon 4G LTE has been recently lagging often, sometimes giving great speeds and sometimes less than 1Mbps download speeds. I believe this is due to their congested network and Verizon 4G LTE network has been degrading as time goes on.
T-Mobile has improved vastly from my last speed tests and since they’ve rolled out 4G LTE. I no longer get edge signals inside buildings (although sometimes I do) as much and 4G LTE signals have gotten much better.
Overall, if you live in San Francisco, you will probably do best with AT&T followed by T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint.
Now that’s only speeds we are talking about but if you want the “best deal”, I would have to say T-Mobile has best deal, followed by Sprint (if you don’t mind dropping to 3G, which is still decent and better than EDVO/Edge), AT&T, and Verizon.
If you don’t need 4G LTE all of the time, going with T-Mobile or Sprint might not be a bad deal since they do offer cheaper monthly plans along with unlocked bootloaders for those of you interested in installing custom ROMs like CyanogenMod.
*Note – This is a speed test in SF Bay Area, does not speak for the rest of the U.S. Your 4G LTE coverage/speeds may differ depending on where you live!
I will do some more speed test in the future but here’s my current ranking for the 4 networks in SF Bay Area:
Best 4G LTE coverage & speeds
1. AT&T
2. T-Mobile
3. Verizon
4. Sprint
Best 4G LTE “deals”
1. T-Mobile
2. Sprint
3. AT&T
4. Verizon
Also check out my previous speed tests:
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