7/7/2023 0 Comments Att wireless speed test![]() But ALL 5G networks were less available than they claim to be. We had to use a "best of" rule and not count pure 5G availability in our overall scores. ![]() The shocker this year was how to cope with 5G networks that were SLOWER than 4G networks in the same place. PCMag has been testing mobile networks for 11 years and had to adjust how it reported results this year because of the curious 5G results, Segan noted on Twitter: In Austin, T-Mobile had the most 5G availability of any carrier, but "its 5G results were 17 percent slower than its 4G results at locations where both networks were available." T-Mobile 5G wasn't always faster than 4G. reduc average download speeds by a shocking 61 percent across the city," PCMag wrote. In Baltimore, where AT&T provided average speeds of 117.1Mbps, "kicking into 5G mode. While AT&T 5G phones often accessed just 5MHz of spectrum, Segan wrote that his analysis shows it "takes at least 50MHz of dedicated 5G spectrum to make a real difference." Advertisement More specifically, "at locations with both 4G and 5G, our 5G phone was slower than our 4G phone in 21 out of 22 cities," the article said. For AT&T, using a 5G phone in testing was often a step backward from our 4G-only phone. So if they're in 5G mode, they're giving up 4G channels so they can use that extremely narrow, often 5MHz 5G channel, and the result is slower performance: faux G. "The most recent phones are able to assemble up to seven of them-that's called seven-carrier aggregation, and it's why AT&T won last year," the article said.ĥG phones can't handle that yet, PCMag analyst Sascha Segan wrote:īut 5G phones can't add as many 4G channels to a 5G channel. And because of the way current 5G phones work, it often reduces performance."ĪT&T's 4G network benefits from the aggregation of channels from different frequencies. The counterintuitive result doesn't reveal much about the actual differences between 4G and 5G technology. Instead, it's reflective of how AT&T has used its spectrum to deploy 5G so far. As PCMag explained, "AT&T's 5G slices off a narrow bit of the old 850MHz cellular band and assigns it to 5G, to give phones a valid 5G icon without increasing performance. ![]() Instead, the disappointing result on PCMag's test has to do with how today's 5G phones work and with how AT&T allocates spectrum. Of course, AT&T 5G should be faster than 4G in the long run-this isn't another case of AT&T misleadingly labeling its 4G network as a type of 5G. PCMag concluded that "AT&T 5G right now appears to be essentially worthless," though AT&T's average download speed of 103.1Mbps was nearly as good as Verizon's thanks to a strong 4G performance. ![]() In PCMag's annual mobile-network testing, released today, 5G phones connected to AT&T got slower speeds than 4G phones in 21 out of 22 cities. Getty Images | Mat Hayward reader comments 90 withĪT&T smartphone users who see their network indicators switch from "4G" to "5G" shouldn't necessarily expect that they're about to get faster speeds. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |