The rules are simple: two human competitors face off in a game of dodgeball, and each can recruit a team of people to help him triumph over his nemesis. The 3G download speed of the modem with which each player is paired determines how many additional players he can get.

Why does testing 3G performance matter in 2016? Because we still wind up using 3G networks in a number of situations. Many 4G LTE networks are still up-and-coming, so you may connect to an operator’s 3G towers more often than you realize. And, when traveling internationally, the phone you bought at home may not support the LTE bands used in the country you’re visiting, so you may end up on the local operator’s 3G network instead.

But, because 3G download speeds are, on average, slower than those of 4G LTE, you need to have a modem that will squeeze every ounce of performance out of the 3G network. In fact, as the data shows here, the difference modems make in 3G performance can be quite drastic.

How did we test modem performance for this event? Qualcomm Technologies ran industry-standard 3G performance tests under a variety of conditions, from a person standing still to a person riding in a car, from an ideal wireless channel to one that’s full of noise and interference, and from strong signal to very weak signal.