PC Magazine July 2017

Carrier and Network Profiles
AT&T
The carrier is this year’s big surprise. The company has been
doing fine but not great since 2013. This year, though, it leapt
forward with a massive increase in speed based on its poorly
marketed 5G Evolution plan. 5G Evolution is really just
gigabit LTE, the same cocktail of 4G technologies that the
other carriers are installing.
But AT&T is doing a good job of it, and the company is only
getting started. We saw in Indianapolis, for instance, that AT&T has industryleading
speeds out to the internet, and speeds to a server within AT&T’s
network were absolutely blistering. As the carrier further builds out
connectivity, we expect speeds will get even higher.
AT&T also may be benefitting from a dramatic loss in customers over the past
few years. Millions of AT&T smartphone subscribers have been decamping to
other carriers, replaced on AT&T’s network by smart cars and Internet of
Things devices that use less data. That’s made its network less congested and
has probably helped contribute to its excellent results this year.
SPRINT
Sprint made a great leap forward between 2015 and 2016, becoming
competitive for the first time in years. It couldn’t keep up the momentum this
year, though—its average speeds stayed pretty much the
same as in 2016 while other carriers advanced. That doesn’t
match up with Sprint’s rhetoric, but I have some ideas as to
why we’re seeing this result.
Sprint made the conscious decision to privilege downloads over
uploads on its network, with the justification that because people
mostly download, network speeds should reflect that. The
argument would hold up better if Sprint showed spectacular
download speeds, but its peak speeds only match the
competition—they don’t exceed it.