Survey says slow iPhone 3G speeds may be due to carriers

[WumpusVA]

This is an article that appeared on Macworld:

Macworld | iPhone Central | Survey says slow iPhone 3G speeds may be due to carriers

by Dan Moren, Macworld.com
Aug 25, 2008 12:43 pm

Complaints about the iPhone 3G’s networking speeds—or, more appropriately, lack thereof—have been floating around ever since the phone’s release last month. We even did a little testing of our own and established that the results varied widely depending on geographic location.

Now, the fine folks over at Wired (led by none other than former Macworld editor Brian X. Chen) have taken it a step further, compiling a global survey of iPhone users’ experiences with their network connectivity. What did the big W find? Well, they’ve concluded, as we did, that 3G speeds do fluctuate broadly, and that those differences seem largely to fall at the feet of not the iPhone itself, but to the carriers.

Among the tidbits that Wired gleans from their admittedly unscientific results are that Australia suffers from the lowest average network speeds (around 759 kbps) while Germany and the Netherlands benefited from the highest (around 2,000 kbps). The United States, unfortunately, had the largest number of instances in which phones registered 0 for their speeds, presumably because they were dropped from the 3G network while performing the test (though it's also worth noting that the U.S. had far and away the most number of participants as well).

Wired also found that metropolitan areas that usually have the highest 3G saturation are often slow due to overloaded towers and that T-Mobile was the carrier with the fastest average speeds (1,822 kbps), followed by Canada’s Rogers and Fido, and a four way tie for third between AT&T, Telstra, Telia, and SoftBank.

There’s much more at the link above, including the raw data that Wired compiled, but the takeaway here seems to be that it’s not going to be Apple that fixes the iPhone’s problems but its partners—meaning we could be in for a long haul of 3G annoyances as the companies slowly update their respective networks.

[Steve B]

Originally Posted by WumpusVA

This is an article that appeared on Macworld:

Macworld | iPhone Central | Survey says slow iPhone 3G speeds may be due to carriers

by Dan Moren, Macworld.com
Aug 25, 2008 12:43 pm

Complaints about the iPhone 3G’s networking speeds—or, more appropriately, lack thereof—have been floating around ever since the phone’s release last month. We even did a little testing of our own and established that the results varied widely depending on geographic location.

Now, the fine folks over at Wired (led by none other than former Macworld editor Brian X. Chen) have taken it a step further, compiling a global survey of iPhone users’ experiences with their network connectivity. What did the big W find? Well, they’ve concluded, as we did, that 3G speeds do fluctuate broadly, and that those differences seem largely to fall at the feet of not the iPhone itself, but to the carriers.

Among the tidbits that Wired gleans from their admittedly unscientific results are that Australia suffers from the lowest average network speeds (around 759 kbps) while Germany and the Netherlands benefited from the highest (around 2,000 kbps). The United States, unfortunately, had the largest number of instances in which phones registered 0 for their speeds, presumably because they were dropped from the 3G network while performing the test (though it's also worth noting that the U.S. had far and away the most number of participants as well).

Wired also found that metropolitan areas that usually have the highest 3G saturation are often slow due to overloaded towers and that T-Mobile was the carrier with the fastest average speeds (1,822 kbps), followed by Canada’s Rogers and Fido, and a four way tie for third between AT&T, Telstra, Telia, and SoftBank.

There’s much more at the link above, including the raw data that Wired compiled, but the takeaway here seems to be that it’s not going to be Apple that fixes the iPhone’s problems but its partners—meaning we could be in for a long haul of 3G annoyances as the companies slowly update their respective networks.

They seem to be basing the entire thing on the premise that every single iPhone 3G out is having issues. So we all know you are going to find people with working iPhone 3Gs. However, A LOT of them are. If its the iPhone 3Gs having this problem then its something in the iPhone 3G. Other 3G handsets are not having these kind of issues. Apple is actively trying to fix the problem. What every single thing is pointing to is that either there is a hardware defect and/or internal settings set by Apple. If its an internal settings problem, Apple should be able to fix it with a firmware update.

Even if iPhone 3Gs are certain networks are performing better, couldn't it just be that the settings work better on some networks and not others. In that case, again, Apple needs to adjust it. A wireless carrier should not have to specially tweak their network for one device when other regular 3G phones work fine. The device maker needs to adjust it for the wireless carrier.

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by Steve B

They seem to be basing the entire thing on the premise that every single iPhone 3G out is having issues. We all know that some iPhone 3G devices are not having issues. However, A LOT of them are. If its the iPhone 3Gs having this problem then its something in the iPhone 3G. Other 3G handsets are not having these kind of issues. Apple is actively trying to fix the problem. What every single thing is pointing to is that either there is a hardware defect and/or internal settings set by Apple. If its an internal settings problem, Apple should be able to fix it with a firmware update.

Even if iPhone 3Gs are certain networks are performing better, couldn't it just be that the settings work better on some networks and not others. In that case, again, Apple needs to fix it. A wireless carrier should not have to specially tweak their network for one device. The device maker needs to adjust it for the wireless carrier.

Thanks Steve, I was just about to bring this up. I have been using 3G since May 07, in rural, urban, and congested areas (Chicago) of the US. I have also used my Treo overseas (Portugal & Spain) on 3G spanning atleast 4 different providers, and have not had any problems.

[Alienware_51]

When I was in Flint, Michigan a few weeks ago, I had perfect 3G reception, and internet speed was great. I think it's a 3G chipset issue (in a very small number of iPhones), because the majority of people I have talked to who have the iPhone and use it in a 3G area don't really have any problems.

Edit: What some one should do is get a few iPhones from different manufacturing weeks (ie: my iPhone was made in week 30 of manufacturing) so let's say a week 20, 25, 28, 30, 32, and 34 iPhone and have them all in the same spot in an outdoor location and compare the signal strength in dBm's and NOT "bars". This could rule out the variable if it was a hardware defect. Theoretically speaking

[viewfly]

Ignoring for the moment the whole iphone story, I find this an interesting market study of looking at things half empty vs half full (or slow vs fast). I don't know what network 3G speeds are promised in Europe, but ATT (again not at all related to the iphone, but their 3G) network advertises 2x the speed over EDGE. EDGE should give ~ 130 kbps or so.

The reference article was only discussing network speeds...nothing more.

Looking at this survey's raw data, most and by far most US users indeed get those 2X improvements in download speeds. In fact, most, and by far most, get faster download then that ( 500, 800, 1000, and 1400kbps).

Most people complain about the variations in data speeds, when in fact mostly they are getting 2x or greater...so the complaint seems to be that we want the max that 3G can offer...and not the conservative advertised 2x speed that ATT promises. It seems that ATT knows it's network very well, otherwise why promise such a low number?

That is looking at the negative.

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by Alienware_51

When I was in Flint, Michigan a few weeks ago, I had perfect 3G reception, and internet speed was great. I think it's a 3G chipset issue (in a very small number of iPhones), because the majority of people I have talked to who have the iPhone and use it in a 3G area don't really have any problems.

Edit: What some one should do is get a few iPhones from different manufacturing weeks (ie: my iPhone was made in week 30 of manufacturing) so let's say a week 20, 25, 28, 30, 32, and 34 iPhone and have them all in the same spot in an outdoor location and compare the signal strength in dBm's and NOT "bars". This could rule out the variable if it was a hardware defect. Theoretically speaking

I agree. Say 1% of a million plus phones came from one factory (and there were more than one) or a bad week? That is 10,000 defective phones. How many of a new model does Nokia sell in one weekend? Nothing like it. 1% is not a high defective rate.

We don't have all the data, so speculation is really ineffective. But since the majority of iphones are working fine, it can be said it is not a design error. More likely what was said above, or not tuned well to the american network coverage in 3G.

We will see. I will be in Japan shortly and will check it out there.

[scotsboyuk]

The most recent speed test I performed gave a download rate of around 1.4 Mbps. I'm not sure what class of HSDPA the iPhone has (3. Mbps?), and I am not sure what O2's maximum speed is, but that seems not too shabby to me. O2 has the worst 3G network in the UK so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have the faster speeds. T-Mobile and 3 both have around the 3.2 Mbps mark, and I believe Vodafone has 7.2 Mbps HSDPA in some parts of the country.

[bobolito]

Originally Posted by Steve B

....Other 3G handsets are not having these kind of issues....

When the iPhone came out and the week after, every area of the US that was complaining also saw every other 3G device with dramatically slower speeds. I mean I was getting not even EDGE, it was more like GPRS speeds on my Moto V9. So it was not only the iPhone.

Another problem is that these new speed test sites that have emerged to test the iPhone speeds are not the most reliable. I would constantly get around 500kbps from iphonespeedtest.com regardless which connection I was using (AT&T 3G, home WiFi, work LAN). And so needless to say, when I went to another site I would get a completely different speed measurement. Unfortunately, most people take these sites for granted and post whatever speed they got. That amounts to the large inaccuracy of the speculations about the iPhone vs network problems.

[RadioFoneGuy]

2X speed claim would be 300 - 400k speeds as EDGE averages 150 - 200+ speeds.