T-Mobile’s LTE and HSPA+ network latency comes out on top in comparison with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint

With yesterday’s news and encouragements regarding T-Mobile’s continued expansion of its own LTE network in the States and the gradual upgrading to 10+10 and 20+20 networks, it’s a further “cherry on the top” to hear that our favorite magenta colored carrier scored well on latency tests. In LTE, HSPA+ and HSPA tests, it came out on top of every comparison. Using a panel of over 1 million consumer devices, OpenSignal partnered with FierceWireless to show real world data.

With most network tests, the most commonly used measure of performance is to compare download and upload speeds. As any of you with knowledge will know, it’s not the only thing that makes a difference to daily internet use. Latency also factors in to the real-life experience. As explained by FierceWireless:

“…latency is defined as the time it takes for a source to send a packet of data to a receiver. Latency is typically measured in milliseconds. The lower the latency (the fewer the milliseconds) the better the network performance.”

With that in mind, we should take a look at a couple of the results. Firstly, LTE. Open Source tested latency on each of the four carriers. In this test, T-Mobile performed best, and was the only network to achieve results below 90ms. (You’ll have to forgive the obviously poor choice in color co-ordination.)

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Sprint, unsurprisingly, finished bottom of the pile, with Verizon and AT&T virtually level pegging. And it was a similar story for Tmo in the HSPA and HSPA+ tests too. In this case, it was only compared with AT&T since both Verizon and Sprint use CDMA technologies for their 3G networks.

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For those of you interested in the specific figures, the raw data is available at the source link below. But, it does show that when it comes to a responsive network, T-Mobile’s is up there with the best of them. Time will tell if this  gets better or worse with the addition of more LTE markets, and with the influx of new customers making use of the carrier’s network.

Source: FierceWireless

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