3G and 4G Wireless Speed Showdown: Which Networks Are Fastest?

PC Magazine tested 3G and 4G wireless data transfer speeds -- indoors and out -- for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, at multiple locations in 13 major cities.

It took snapshot measurements of wireless service in 13 cities--Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, DC -- across the country to get a real-time view of how the 3G-to-4G transition is progressing, and of which companies are currently delivering on the promised faster speeds. In general, the major wireless carriers appear to be keeping pace with the explosion in demand for mobile data service. The 3G service that most of us use today is at least as fast as it was a year ago, even though far more subscribers are tapping the networks with increasingly data-hungry devices. And a new generation of much faster 4G wireless service is quickly becoming commonplace in the country's more populous areas.