I'm a little behind on this, but Wired drops the bomb on AT&T. Why the heck are US iPhone users hobbled by this piece of junk?
Wired.com asked iPhone 3G users all around the world to participate in a study, which involved testing their 3G speeds and entering their data on an interactive map. The purpose? To gain a general idea of how 3G was performing -- where it's best and where it's worst -- in light of widespread complaints about the handset's network performance. More than 2,600 people participated (wow!) and we've diligently cleaned up the data to present it to you here.
The data overall shows that 3G is performing faster than EDGE (which is expected). In the best scenarios, 3G is up to seven times faster than EDGE; in worse scenarios, 3G performed just as slowly as EDGE; at worst, some users couldn't connect to 3G at all -- which isn't surprising since 3G towers are not yet ubiquitous.
The most "0" results for 3G download speeds came from U.S. participants -- presumably those dropped from the 3G network. In the United States, 63 participants reported "0" Altogether there were 80 "0" figures reported.
European T-Mobile users reported the fastest 3G Download Speeds: 1,822 Kbps on average.
Canadian carriers Rogers and Fido tied for second fastest with an average download speed of about 1,330 Kbps on average.
U.S. carrier AT&T tied for third with Telstra, Telia and Softbank, where users reported average download speeds of roughly 990 Kbps.
Australian carriers Optus and Virgin users reported the slowest speeds of about 390 Kbps on average.
Just so we're clear here: US users on AT&T get half the average wireless speed of European users. That stinks. I assume we pay half as much for the service. :)