AT&T and Verizon are battling it out to build nationwide, high-speed wireless networks to feed Americans' millions of hungry smartphones and tablets, and Sprint and T-Mobile aren't far behind. So, for the fourth year running, we sent drivers out on the road to test our 4G nation and figure out which network is the fastest near you.

This year, we upgraded our testing to be more consistent and more realistic. We put three Ford hybrid-electric cars on the road (for more, see "It's Electric! Driving Ford's High-Tech Cars"), each packed with eight identical Samsung phones to test the four major carriers' networks: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. A new testing tool from Sensorly let us grab new measurements, like the all-important "time to first byte" which tells you how long it takes for a Web page to start to appear. (For more, see How We Tested.)

With our improved tools, we found out why you should be looking for the letters "LTE" on your 4G phone, and how LTE's strengths lend themselves to real-world advantages like faster Web page downloads. But remember: The speeds we saw on AT&T's and Verizon's nationwide LTE networks look spectacular, but they aren't the whole story, as neither network is able to deliver a completely consistent or affordable home broadband quality experience. (For more, see "4G: Beyond Speed.")

Overall, we found AT&T's LTE network to be the fastest of the group, but Verizon Wireless typically triumphed on our reliability gauges. T-Mobile's new LTE network looked great in the few cities where we could find it, and it has the best backup in T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. Sprint, just like in 2012, didn't win any cities, but it's on an upward trend by switching from obsolete WiMAX to a fresh LTE system.

This is all great news, because it means competition is working. While none of the wireless carriers offers a perfect 4G experience, they're all working hard and delivering better networks than they did last year. There's one thing clear, though: If you have an older 3G phone and you're in an LTE coverage area, upgrade to an LTE phone right now. The difference in data performance is dramatic.

Where We Tested

This year, we worked with our technology partner Sensorly to collect even more data in our 30 studied cities. Once again, we chose our 30 test cities so they were evenly spread across our six regions, and so we could drive to all of them in three weeks. We also chose so as many of them as possible had the maximum number of 4G networks.

We defined the boundary around each city as either the city limits, or the city's major ring road. Outside those 30 cities, our cars drove on a mix of interstate and U.S. highways and stopped in smaller cities along the way. The data we collected contributed to a "suburban/rural" score for each of our six regions.

Every one of our 30 cities had AT&T's and Verizon's LTE networks. We also tested 24 of Sprint's 88 LTE markets and six of T-Mobile's seven LTE cities: Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Washington DC. While we saw some limited T-Mobile LTE in Tucson, Seattle, and the San Francisco Bay Area, we didn't deem coverage broad enough to include the results in the study.

Over the years, we've gotten a lot of complaints from people who live in states we haven't been able to focus on, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Ohio. We're looking at using crowdsourcing and additional data sets to expand our coverage even further beyond our own drive testing in 2014.

What We Tested

This is "fastest" mobile networks, so we're focusing on speed and reliability. We didn't test call quality, dropped calls, or coverage. For the best assessment of voice call quality according to our readers, check out our annual Reader's Choice awards results. To get a picture of wireless coverage near you, go to Sensorly's Web site and you'll see crowd-sourced coverage maps for all the major U.S. mobile carriers, enhanced with the data from our test drives. (For more, see How We Tested.)

Mobile networks are constantly changing, and almost always for the better. And because speeds vary based on tower location, network load, device used, and even the weather, we can't predict performance in a specific location; rather, we're giving a snapshot of a few days' worth of usage in several locations across a metro area. Hit the next page for the regional and national winners.

Regional and National Winners

Regional and National Winners

Northeast: AT&T 4G LTE

Last year, we noted AT&T's LTE network offered higher download speeds than Verizon's, but it wasn't available in all of our northeastern test cities. This year it is, and that made all the difference. AT&T's network delivered better upload and download speeds than Verizon's, making it our choice across the northeast.









Southeast: AT&T 4G LTE









The southeastern region saw some of AT&T's overall fastest speeds, in Raleigh, and although Verizon Wireless also got faster this year, AT&T maintained its lead with a superior LTE network. AT&T's network dropped off in rural Georgia and Florida, though, making Verizon Wireless a better choice in areas outside the cities.

North Central: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's LTE speeds boomed in Chicago and St. Louis this year, helping that network take the crown for the fastest in the north-central region. The results were close, though: Verizon won Detroit and the North Central rural regions outright, and would have won St. Louis had we balanced our score more towards reliability than speed.









South Central: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T and Verizon ran neck and neck across Texasthey were effectively tied overall in Houston and Dallasbut AT&T's solid wins in New Orleans and Memphis made it our winner for the South Central region. As we've seen in other regions, the choice between the two big carriers was about speed versus reliability, with AT&T offering faster sustained downloads and Verizon fewer timed-out Web connections, although both performed well on both measures.









Northwest: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's clear wins in Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Seattle made up for Verizon's broader coverage along rural Interstates to give AT&T the award for the fastest mobile network in the Northwest. T-Mobile's new LTE network showed real promise when we could find it in the Seattle and San Jose areas, though, so it could become a true competitor there soon.









Southwest: AT&T 4G LTE

Our southwestern markets split, with Phoenix going to T-Mobile LTE, Los Angeles and the rural areas going to Verizon Wireless, and Tucson, Las Vegas and San Diego being handed to AT&T. With a split like that, AT&T won by a nose, but it's clear that people in the southwest need to pay attention to what's available in their specific cities. A glimpse of an active T-Mobile LTE tower in Tucson gave us hope for that to become a third competitive network in more of Arizona.









Rural/Suburban: Verizon 4G LTE

Beyond our 30 cities, coverage really mattered, and only one LTE network has nationwide coverage: Verizon 4G LTE. With Verizon's LTE network the only one of its kind in the running, it aced every rural/suburban region and blew away the competing national networks.









National: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's LTE network was the fastest overall in our 30 cities. In our first truly fair fight between LTE networks, AT&T came through with faster upload and download speeds overall than Verizon Wireless, although Verizon offered better reliability and greater rural coverage than its competitor. If you're looking for a fast mobile broadband experience in major and medium-sized cities, AT&T is the best nationwide 4G choice.



Different Carriers, Different Strength

Different Carriers, Different Strengths

AT&T is on top of the world this year with the fastest LTE network in most major cities. While we don't test coverage in this study, we found AT&T's LTE network to be generally more consistent than past years, too. AT&T's 3G network is faster than Verizon's or Sprint's and even makes a good showing against T-Mobile's because of its ability to deliver the first byte of a Web page more promptly than T-Mobile does. All together, that makes AT&T our choice this year for a speedy mobile data network.

Sprint made a big network transition this year from its older 4G WiMAX network to a newer, still nascent LTE network. That's generally been a good move, as its 4G speeds have increased in all but two cities. Its network team is smart, prioritizing solid Web page performance over raw speed-test results. But LTE coverage is still spotty in many cities and speeds are usually slower than AT&T and Verizon. Two major network enhancements later this year, the addition of 800MHz ex-Nextel spectrum and Clearwire's upcoming TD-LTE network, should help with those issues.

Sprint's 3G network, meanwhile, went from being utterly awful to merely slow. Thanks to a massive upgrade as part of Sprint's Network Vision project, speeds doubled in many cities, but they're still a quarter of what you'd see on AT&T's and T-Mobile's 3G networks. That means we have real trouble recommending Sprint 3Gor Virgin, or Boostto anyone looking for a fast data connection.

T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network hides a secret. While it delivers excellent sustained download speeds, those speeds don't look as fast in real life because of a very long time to negotiate the connection, which we measured as "time to first byte." This seemed to have to do with the network frequently switching between UMTS and HSPA+ modes when a connection was opened.

So while T-Mobile's HSPA+ is still the fastest of the 3G services (although both T-Mobile and we typically call it 4G), T-Mobile customers will see major advantages with LTE, which knocked up to two seconds off of the time the first byte arrives on phones. Where we found it, T-Mobile's LTE was faster and more robust than its low-cost rival Sprint, but that may be in part to very few people actually using the network. We always see fast speeds on unloaded networks.

Verizon Wireless, as always, is the master of coverage and reliability. It's the only truly nationwide LTE network and it generally aced our streaming and Web page download reliability tests. While its LTE network is generally a bit slower than AT&T's, it's still fast, and the carrier wins our Reader's Choice awards year after year for its coverage area and general customer satisfaction levels.

In our reviews, we also typically look at three carriers which we didn't test this year. MetroPCS is being folded into T-Mobile, and Cricket and U.S. Cellular didn't cover enough of our test cities with LTE to be viable for this project. That doesn't mean they're bad choices; in fact, U.S. Cellular regularly wins Reader's Choice awards for its coverage, call quality and customer support.

How We Tested

How We Tested

To test the nation's mobile networks, we used field-test software from network testing firm Sensorly, loaded onto Android-powered smartphones.

We used Samsung Galaxy Note II phones for each one of the eight separate networks we tested: the Sprint and Verizon CDMA networks, the AT&T and T-Mobile UMTS/HSPA networks, and the four LTE networks. We loaded the phones into two Ford C-Max Energi cars and one Ford Fusion Energi, equipped with power inverters to run the phones all day long.

Sensorly's 2013 software ran a broad suite of tests every three minutes: a "ping" to test network latency, multi-threaded HTTP upload and download tests including separate "time to first byte" measures, a 4MB single-threaded file download, a 2MB single-threaded file upload, the download of a 1MB Web page with 70 elements, and 100kbps and 500kbps UDP streams designed to simulate streaming media.

Not every metric made it into our final Speed Score. After looking at the results and consulting with Sensorly and the carriers, we found that the file upload and download tests timed out too frequently on slower 3G networks to offer a good comparison across 3G and 4G systems, and that the 100kbps UDP stream worked pretty much everywhere, so it wasn't a good differentiator.

We tested mostly during business hours, during a period from May 1st to May 29th, 2013; different cities on different days. In each city, our drivers stopped in eleven locations for at least 15 minutes (five test cycles) each. We also collected data while moving, both within and between cities.

We ended up with about 90,000 test cycles across our 30 cities, in a 136MB Excel 2010 spreadsheet.

The PCMag Speed Score

Our speed score this year is a weighted average balancing 70% speed and 30% network reliability.

HTTP download speed (30%)

HTTP upload speed (20%)

Web page download speed (10%)

HTTP download time to first byte (10%)

Successful Web page completion in 30 seconds (20%)

500kbps UDP streams with <1% packet loss (10%)

The regional and national scores are the averages of the cities and suburban/rural areas in each region, with a 16.6 percent (one-sixth of the total score) penalty for each city a carrier has no coverage in.

We're also reporting average and maximum speeds. The average speeds are calculated by each of the ten stationary tests making up 1/12 of the average, and the total of all mobile tests in a city making up 1/6 of the average. For suburban/rural areas, we just took an average of all tests.

4G: Beyond Speed

4G: Beyond Speed

Peak speeds just aren't a problem anymore, but that doesn't mean we live in a 4G paradise. With inconsistent speeds, limited coverage and high prices for heavy users, our 4G networks still have a long way to go before they can really transform how we use the Internet. We found some results in our 30-city study which show these gaps.

An Inconsistent Truth

With about 8Mbps down and 4Mbps up, you've got broadband. Currently, HD video streaming is the heaviest app most consumers use, and a good 1080p Netflix stream takes about an 8Mbps consistent connection. As I spoke to the carriers before starting Fastest Mobile Networks 2013, they agreed that they were all aiming for at least a consistent 8/4 experience across their LTE networks.

They're far from it. AT&T failed to deliver 8 megabits down at least 20 percent of the time in two thirds of our cities. Verizon did even worse; it only delivered 8Mbps results 80% of the time in Detroit and Indianapolis. And Sprint's hometown of Kansas City was the only place where we saw Sprint LTE exceeding 8Mbps more than half the time.

Verizon did better than AT&T on overall timeouts, though. Looking at cities where LTE networks couldn't complete a 1MB Web page download in 30 seconds, AT&T dipped under 90 percent reliability on that measure in 10 of our 30 cities and Sprint was less than 90 percent reliable in 11 cities, while Verizon only struggled in one.

And then there's coverage. Verizon now covers more than 495 markets; by the time you read this, it should have finished blanketing its entire 3G network with LTE. AT&T has half the coverage at 278, Sprint has 88, and T-Mobile only had seven when we were testing.

Don't assume coverage in a city means you'll be able to get LTE inside buildings, either. While AT&T and Verizon broadcast their LTE on the low-frequency 700MHz band, which does a good job of penetrating buildings, T-Mobile will have a harder job to do at 1700MHz. Sprint's 1900MHz band is the highest, but the carrier is supplementing it with old Nextel spectrum down at 800MHz, which should give it some in-building chops at the cost of lower capacity.

Coverage and consistency, not peak speeds, are the challenge carriers are going to face as they mature their LTE networksand as our test results show, Americans are going to feel a lot of frustrations at they do.

The Capacity Trap

I say pretty often that LTE is as fast as home Internet. But because of low capacity and high prices, it can't really be used the way you use home Internet, preventing Americans from taking advantage of those high speeds.

The problem, of course, is data caps. The reason carriers try to stop you from using your mobile data on a laptop or hotspot as opposed to a phone is because it makes the data caps a lot more obvious, and a lot more chafing. Much of the conflict has to do with HD video and large file downloads, which are consumed on laptops much more often than on phones. When an HD movie weighs in at 3-4GB and some high-end iPad games are more than a gigabyte, something has to give.

The average AT&T home customer uses about 21GB per month. But that kind of usage is either expensive or impossible on our nation's wireless LTE networks.

If you're looking for 20GB a month, your best bet is AT&T's Mobile Share Data plan, which works with tablets and hotspots (not phones) and costs $110/month. Bundling that with a smartphone makes it an insane $230. Verizon's data-only Share Everything plan runs $130 for 20GB, or $190 if you need voice and text.

Sprint and T-Mobile may advertise themselves as "unlimited" carriers, but that comes with a long string of asterisks: It's only unlimited on a smartphone. Try to share your Internet out to a laptop or tablet, and it's actually impossible to buy more than 12GB of monthly data from either carrier.

While they're fast, America's 4G networks have a long way to go before they're truly nationwide. With the carriers' pricing policies, they may never truly compete against wired broadband. We'll check back in 2014 and see how things have shaped up.

It's Electric! Driving Ford's High-Tech Cars

It's Electric! Driving Ford's High-Tech Cars

The cars were all plug-in hybrids with built-in batteries and Ford's latest big-screen MyFord Touch entertainment and navigation system. They even have an API. Connect your car to a smartphone and you can harvest telemetry data using Ford's OpenXC APIeverything from steering wheel angle to windshield-wiper status.

A few demo projects have used the API to implement a rear-view camera and new hardware gauges, but having seen the spreadsheet of data Ford sent me afterwards, I have some concerns about privacy.

Ford gave me a spreadsheet of the cars' GPS locations, fuel efficiency, regenerative braking status, and a "driver score" for each trip. That's the back end of a gamified user interface that challenges the driver to increase his fuel efficiency, with a graphic of leaves to the right of the speedometer which appear to grow when you're driving in an eco-friendly manner.

"Every time you brake, it tells you how much of the energy you recovered in doing so. This was a big motivator for me, but it only displayed the final percentage when the car came to a complete stop. I only noticed that the car gave me a final "score" at the end of each drive fairly late in the trip, but I did get a kick out of seeing my total MPG. It claimed 51.9 mpg at one point," PCMag.com analyst Max Eddy said.

But the implications for anyone driving a car from a corporate fleet, or for that matter driving a family vehicle, is that whoever owns the car can monitor pretty much everything you do in the driver's seat. On one level, it's perfectly sensible that the owner of the car should know exactly what the driver is up to. On another, it means that if you aren't the owner, Big Brother may be watching when you stop for coffee.

Pulling the Plug

Our drivers generally really liked the performance of Ford's hybrid cars, although we were pretty quickly reminded of the limits of a plug-in hybrid.

Cars charge slowly. If you're buying a plug-in hybrid, you're probably doing it for a short daily commute within the battery's 21-mile electric range. You aren't expecting to reap major electric savings on long road trips.

We drove out with cards from the Blink and ChargePoint charger networks, and our drivers were able to find chargers in many of our cities. There are quite a few out there. But this isn't like gassing up your vehiclecharging for fifteen minutes, or even an hour, doesn't do much at all. (We got four minutes of driving on a 30-minute charge in St. Louis.) It's clear that these hybrids need to be tucked in at night in a garage, not powered up during your power lunch. Otherwise, buying the regular hybrid versions will get you almost the same fuel economy for thousands less.

Beyond that, though, I heard plenty of compliments on the cars' ride from the drivers. Here's Lead Analyst Jamie Lendino, who heads our automotive coverage and drove the Fusion Energi:

"The fact that the car shifts in EV mode at speeds up to 85mph is significant; no other hybrid, plug-in or not, does that, unless you count the Volt's somewhat different approach to electric versus gas power. Also, transitions between gas and electric have a very slight shutter, but it's extremely quick, and the shutter isn't as bad as on some hybrid cars. And you can use the A/C at idle at stoplights, unlike the (non-plug-in) Honda Insight hybrid. The Fusion is sufficiently fast, but flooring it sometimes takes several beats for the continuously variable transmission (CVT) to respond, and it sounds like a broken clutch when it accelerates hard. It's not a sports sedan, but it's damn impressive tech."

Atlanta, GA

Atlanta, GA: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's home town of Atlanta is a solid win for Big Blue. Our Atlanta tests came out with lower-than-usual speeds for Verizon and Sprint, leaving AT&T to rule the day with its speedy uploads and downloads.

As we saw in other cities, T-Mobile did very well on long file downloads, but its score was hurt by slow uploads and long time-to-first-byte results, both occupational hazards of the way T-Mobile has set up its HSPA+ network. T-Mobile subscribers shouldn't fret, though: From what we hear, T-Mobile should be firing up LTE in Atlanta soon, if not right now.

Austin, TX

Austin, TX: AT&T 4G LTE

We came to Austin this year to check out Sprint's 4G LTE network, and it didn't disappoint us. While AT&T's 4G LTE, like in most other cities, took the crown with some truly outrageous download speeds, Sprint's unlimited LTE network turned in a better performance than we saw in many other cities.

The fastest spot overall in our journey around Austin was down by the airport, where AT&T and Verizon both showed excellent results. Austin was actually the fastest city overall for both AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the only place where both networks' average download speeds topped 20Mbps.

Baltimore, MD

Baltimore, MD: T-Mobile 4G LTE

Verizon's LTE network struggled surprisingly at our 10 Baltimore locations. It didn't drop out, but we didn't get great speeds. The real battle here was between T-Mobile's brand-new LTE network and AT&T's more mature LTE network.

With so few devices using the new network, T-Mobile came out the winnerand it helps that T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 backup network had noticeably faster downloads and fewer stalls than AT&T's 3G backup. As for coverage, we hit LTE on T-Mobile everywhere except down by Fort McHenry.

Boston, MA

Boston, MA: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's 4G LTE network will feed your need for speed in Boston. We tested locations from Somerset to Mattapan, finding AT&T's LTE network with its HSPA backup offered great enough speed advantages to overcome a slight reliability deficit versus Verizon.

Of the lower-cost carriers, Sprint's new LTE network is pulling ahead of T-Mobile on common tasks like Web page downloads thanks to much faster setup times. But Sprint's backup 3G network failed to deliver in Brookline and Franklin Park, unexpectedly dropping to 2G.

Charlotte, NC

Charlotte, NC: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T scored best in Charlotte with high download speeds and an unusually low time to first byte, which meant Web pages would appear very snappily on our Android phones. Verizon, as usual, delivered slightly slower, but still rock-solid speeds with excellent reliability, and Sprint's new LTE network soundly beat T-Mobile's older HSPA+ network because of a much lower time to first byte.

We found our fastest download, an AT&T connection at 62Mbps, on the edge of the uptown area at N McDowell and E 10th.









Chicago, IL

Chicago, IL: AT&T 4G LTE

An amazing average download speed topping 20 megabits per secondthat's twice as fast as my home cable connectionleads AT&T LTE to triumph in Chicago. AT&T's LTE network positively burned the competition on speed, although as we've seen elsewhere, Verizon's slower LTE network was more widely available across the metro area.

Sprint pulled into second place with surprisingly good all-around performance and availability. Its LTE network showed up at all of our test locations, and while speeds for large file downloads weren't world-class, Sprint delivered an excellent Web and streaming experience.

Dallas, TX

Dallas, TX: AT&T 4G LTE

Year after year, Dallas has been one of the fastest overall cities in the Fastest Mobile Networks tests, and it repeated its performance this year. While AT&T won by a small margin, both AT&T and Verizon showed excellent speeds on their LTE networks, with the usual difference: AT&T was a little bit faster, Verizon a little bit more reliable.

Stick with LTE in Dallas, though. We were unimpressed by the ability of AT&T's and Sprint's 3G networks to complete Web pages and maintain simulated video streams for 30 seconds.

Denver, CO

Denver, CO: AT&T 4G LTE

The air's a little thin in the Mile High City, and we didn't get the spectacular speeds we got in some other cities. Still, though, the LTE networks chugged along at respectable broadband speeds, and AT&T wins the award for Denver by being slightly faster than Verizonalthough as we saw in other cities, Verizon's LTE network was somewhat more reliable at completing Web page downloads.

T-Mobile's shockingly slow time-to-first-byte contributed to its disappointing Web page download time results. Our phone took a long time getting downloads started even when those downloads then proceeded very quickly. That has a bigger effect on downloading Web pages, which are made of many small files, than on downloading single large songs or apps.

Detroit, MI

Detroit, MI: Verizon Wireless 4G LTE

Detroit is still Verizon country. The Verizon Wireless LTE network pulled ahead of its competitors on almost every measure during our tests, which ranged from Grosse Pointe to Dearborn. The only area where AT&T aced Verizon was on our Web page download tests.

Detroit was one of our faster cities overall, and showed improvements in speed over 2012 for all the networks we tested. We expect to see that Sprint LTE number improve with time, as well: Sprint's LTE network was in a very early state in Detroit and only available in three of our test locations.

Houston, TX

Houston, TX: AT&T 4G LTE

We've found 4G connections to be excellent in Texas over the past several years, and this year was no exception. Houstonians have three good choices in AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon LTE, all of which delivered experiences we'd consider fully 4G. AT&T and Verizon pulled ahead of their lower-cost rival with faster Web page downloads, though, primarily because T-Mobile struggled in some tests in the Westchase region of the city.

4G speeds have been pretty stable in Houston over the past year. Looking at our 2012 results, AT&T's and T-Mobile's speeds have gotten slightly slower while Verizon's have gotten slightly faster, but not enough to make a huge difference.

Indianapolis, IN

Indianapolis, IN: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T won Indianapolis over Verizon this year thanks to faster overall download and Web page speeds. Interestingly, compared to last year, AT&T's LTE performance is actually a little slower while Verizon's stayed the same, but the AT&T/Verizon gap was large enough for Big Blue to maintain its lead.

T-Mobile's HSPA+ network got faster this year, and Sprint's new LTE network delivered Web pages promptly. Our fastest spot in Indy, unusually for these tests, was downtown at the Circle Center Mall, where we regularly saw AT&T and Verizon speeds topping 30Mbps.

Kansas City, MO

Kansas City, MO: AT&T 4G LTE

What a difference a year makes! AT&T wins Kansas City with an all-around solid performance, hitting a lot of download speeds over 20Mbps and 30Mbps and generally remaining rock-solid. But the real action here is on the undercard.

Last year, T-Mobile wasn't even in the running in Kansas City. This year, a ton of new spectrum and a brand new LTE network leaves it tied for second, playing with the big boys. Hometown heroes Sprint weren't doing so hot last year, either, but now they're back with an LTE network that offers consistent, solid performance.

Kansas City is blessed with Google Fiber at home, but it looks like locals have a lot of great choices when they leave their homes, too.

Las Vegas, NV

Las Vegas, NV: Verizon Wireless 4G LTE

Verizon Wireless pulled off its Las Vegas win amongst tough competition, especially from T-Mobile's brand-new (and uncluttered) LTE network. The two networks nearly tied, with Verizon's network just eking out a win based on higher download speeds.

Look at those Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile LTE results, though. All three provide excellent experiences in Las Vegas (when you aren't there for a convention, which stresses networks.) If you combine 3G and LTE networks, T-Mobile probably offers the best value hereit's not only less expensive than the competition, its 3G backup is the fastest of that crowd.

Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles, CA: Verizon Wireless 4G LTE

Verizon LTE just nosed out AT&T in Los Angeles for the award. We saw the same trends in Los Angeles that we saw in many other cities: AT&T's LTE network delivered faster download speeds, but Verizon's pulled through with faster uploads, a lower time to first byte, and better consistency. In Los Angeles, Verizon's advantages outweighed AT&T's, so it gets the crown here.

T-Mobile's HSPA+ network was the only other one which impressed us in Los Angeles, with Web page downloads that came through even faster than Verizon's LTE system. Sprint LTE is clearly a work in progress here; while we found it at most of our locations, it was disappointingly slow. Both AT&T's and Verizon's 3G networks had trouble completing Web page downloads within our allotted 30 second limit.

Memphis, TN

Memphis, TN: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's 4G LTE network in Memphis positively blazed, with some of the fastest speeds we saw nationwide and especially spectacular upload speeds. When linked to a solid 3G backup network, that makes AT&T 4G LTE our choice for the fastest mobile network in Memphis.

But Memphians are a bit spoiled for choice; all of our networks did relatively well here. Verizon 4G LTE delivered an excellent 4G experience, T-Mobile offered competitive download speeds, and while Sprint LTE didn't show up at all of our test locations, where it was present it gave good speeds. The fastest download in Memphis? That came at the Oak Court Mall.

Miami, FL

Miami, FL: AT&T 4G LTE

Our tests in Miami took us from Hialeah down to Coral Gables and over to South Beach, and just like in most other cities, we found that AT&T took the Fastest Mobile Network award by a nose over Verizon Wireless. This is a repeating theme: AT&T scored with better speeds all around, but our Web page downloads stalled out slightly more often than on Verizon's somewhat more reliable LTE network.

Sprint's 3G network positively crawled in Miami, with very few Web pages downloads able to complete in the 30 seconds allotted. If you're with Virgin or Boost in Miami, you need to get hold of an LTE device, fast.

New Orleans, LA

New Orleans, LA: AT&T 4G LTE

As elsewhere, AT&T LTE was the fastest mobile network in New Orleans, with its only downside being slightly lower reliability (measured in terms of stalled Web page downloads) with respect to Verizon's perfect score there. But look at those speeds! AT&T's 19Mbps down and 7Mbps up will make for fast game downloads and photo uploads for sure.

Sprint really struggled in New Orleans, as we struggled to find locations with good Sprint LTE coverage. T-Mobile looked like a better low-cost alternative given the carrier's greater reliability.

New York, NY

New York, NY: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T has recovered from its longstanding problems in New York thanks to a speedy, comprehensive new LTE network. The new network has helped AT&T's 3G performance as well, by taking strain off of the older HSPA network. As we've seen elsewhere, AT&T's higher speeds outweighed Verizon's greater reliability in New York. Sprint is bouncing back from truly awful performance the past few years, but needs a bit more citywide coverage before its 4G LTE network can be considered a solid bet.

We hit Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens in our 11 New York tests. Manhattan's extreme density and skyscrapers create problems for every network, so we saw faster speeds in other boroughs. As with last year, we got stellar speeds in Astoria, Queens on the border with Long Island City; AT&T and Verizon both put in fine performances. Sprint and T-Mobile did their best in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia, PA: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T and Verizon are even closer than our Speed Score suggests in Philadelphia; while AT&T offered up a higher average raw speed, notice that Verizon's network downloaded Web pages more quickly. Still, though, AT&T pulled ahead by a nose to be our pick for Philly. The fastest consistent spot we got was on Verizon at S 9th and Passyunk, where we kept pulling download speeds in the 40Mbps range. Take that, Comcast.

T-Mobile's HSPA+ network is our choice over Sprint's 3G and LTE networks in Philadelphia, if only because Sprint's LTE network is clearly in its early days and just didn't deliver the level of coverage and speed we'd expect from a more mature LTE network.

Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix, AZ: T-Mobile 4G LTE

T-Mobile's new LTE network showed the kinds of speeds in Phoenix which made us wonder if we were the only people using it; perhaps we were. It blew away both AT&T's and Verizon's LTE networks on every measure, which means it scored a perfect 100 on our speed score (which is based on how a network does in relation to the competition.) T-Mobile's HSPA+ network scored the best of the 3G alternatives (even though it was slower than last year), which gives T-Mobile a powerful one-two combo in Phoenix.

Sprint, on the other hand, needs LTE in Phoenix badly. Its file and Web page download speeds were much lower than any competing network, and Sprint hasn't announced a date for its 4G rollout in the area. With performance like that, it's very hard to recommend Sprint, Virgin, or Boost in Phoenix.

Portland, OR

Portland, OR: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T nosed out Verizon in Portland thanks to faster download and Web speeds. We saw the same pattern across our 10 Portland tests that we did in many other cities: Verizon's LTE network was slightly more consistent, but AT&T delivered a better overall experience, especially when you factor in its faster 3G backup network.

T-Mobile scored poorly even though it recorded the fastest sustained HSPA download speeds in any of its 30 cities, because its HSPA network took a long time to get the first byte from Web sites. While data transferred very quickly after that, there was a long delay before that first byte arrived.

Raleigh, NC

Raleigh, NC: AT&T 4G LTE

Raleigh is a city of fast LTE connections. We got consistently fast speeds on both AT&T's and Verizon's LTE networks, although AT&T's higher download speeds and faster Web page download speeds gave it the crown over Verizon's slightly better uploads and reliability.

Raleigh shows how important LTE is to Sprint's strategy. Sprint's 3G network in Raleigh was pretty bad when we tested itlook at all of those Web page download timeouts. But Sprint's LTE network had the speediest Web page downloads of any of the major networks, and Raleigh was Sprint's fastest LTE city overall with its 11.8Mbps average downloads. If you're on a Sprint 3G phone in Raleigh, it's very much worth upgrading.

And that 65Mbps download? We found that at our hotel, the Best Western Plus in Cary, which is clearly a good place to go if you're looking for an AT&T connection.

Salt Lake City, UT

Salt Lake City: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T's LTE positively blazes in Salt Lake City, with much faster speeds on all of our measures than any of its competitors. Verizon's strength, as usual, was reliability; T-Mobile was also solid, but its Web performance suffered from very slow page load start times. We found speeds in Salt Lake City relatively stable between our 2012 and 2013 tests.

Our fastest tests in Salt Lake took place just outside the arena at S 300 W and W South Temple, where we saw AT&T download speeds over 50Mbps.

San Diego, CA

San Diego, CA: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T is looking good in San Diego with fast LTE and 3G speeds, and AT&T's LTE network aced all of the other competitors when it came to Web page download speeds. Verizon's network, as usual, also delivered excellent 4G broadband speeds with slightly better reliability.

Look at what's happening with Sprint LTE and T-Mobile HSPA+, though, and you're reminded that "LTE" isn't a unique mark of quality. The two networks ran neck and neck, even though T-Mobile had lower upload speeds, thanks to faster Web page downloads and better reliability on T-Mobile.

San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco Bay Area: AT&T 4G LTE

Our tests in the SF Bay Area took us from San Jose, up the peninsula, and through the city of San Francisco. AT&T LTE provided the best speeds across the Bay Area, with fast uploads and downloads through all of our tests. Verizon LTE, as usual, did better on reliability but fell short on speed.

While we saw Sprint's LTE network all over the Bay Area, we couldn't find enough active T-Mobile LTE locations, so we had to disqualify it here for lack of coverage. We only saw T-Mobile LTE coverage in Santa Clara. It was spectacularly fast when we saw it, though, which bodes well for the network's future.

All of this year's networks showed faster speeds in the Bay Area than they did last year except for T-Mobile HSPA+, which dipped. T-Mobile's new LTE network should help change that.

Seattle, WA

Seattle, WA: AT&T 4G LTE

Seattle is T-Mobile's hometown, but AT&T had the fastest network across Seattle and Bellevue, with much faster sustained upload and download speeds than Verizon Wireless. Look at those Sprint LTE Web page download speeds, thoughwhile Sprint didn't offer the best performance for sustained file transfers, its network design let Web pages download quickly on our test phones.

We got a very brief glimpse of T-Mobile's new LTE network at one tower in Seattle, and we really liked what we saw: an 18.81Mbps download speed and a much lower time to first byte than on T-Mobile's HSPA network, which took quite a while to get going. LTE will be a big help for T-Mobile subscribers in Seattle.

St. Louis, MO

St. Louis, MO: AT&T 4G LTE

Super-fast download speeds let AT&T pull just ahead of Verizon in St. Louis, although Verizon had noticeably faster upload speeds and better reliability. We're clearly talking about two solid LTE networks here.

Take a look at that T-Mobile speed, though. It's a huge jump from 2012's 2.86Mbps down. Some of that reflects our new testing software, but some of it reflects 10MHz of new spectrum T-Mobile got from Leap Wireless in 2012. That eased T-Mobile's spectrum crunch in St. Louis, letting the carrier turn up its faster HSPA+ 42 network rather than the HSPA+ 21 network it had been running until then.

Tampa, FL

Tampa, FL: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T rocked our tests in Tampa and St. Petersburg with the fastest uploads, downloads, and Web pages, making it our top choice for those cities. As we've seen elsewhere, Verizon LTE also pulled out a respectable result, but the combination of AT&T's fast, reliable LTE network and its backup 3G network dealt Verizon a one-two punch.

Sprint's LTE needs a boost in Tampa, though. While in other cities its relatively low average download speeds are balanced out by better time-to-first-byte and Web page performance, we didn't see those saving graces in Tampa. Sprint's network only covered about half of our test sites, though, so that story clearly hasn't been fully written yet.

Tucson, AZ

Tucson, AZ: AT&T 4G LTE

AT&T LTE triumphed in Tucson with the fastest uploads, downloads and Web page arrivals. Its faster 3G backup gives it another advantage over Verizon, which nonetheless turned in a strong performance.

Network performance in Tucson was disappointing overall, though. T-Mobile HSPA and Verizon 3G both turned in slower performances this year than last, Sprint's 3G network had serious trouble completing our 1MB Web page download in 30 seconds, and Tucson was the second-slowest city on average for both AT&T's and Verizon's LTE networks. The carriers need to pay some more attention to Tucson.

One bright spot in Tucson, which we didn't test, is Cricket's local LTE network. If you're not satisfied with any of the major carriers, it may be worth looking into.

Washington, DC

Washington, DC: T-Mobile 4G LTE

T-Mobile's LTE network is nascent in Washington, DC: we saw it in the northeast and southeast sections of the city, but not yet northwest or southwest. But where you can find it, this brand-new network really delivers, with an unusually low time-to-first-byte making Web pages appear very snappily. That makes T-Mobile our winner for Washington.

AT&T's hot on its heels, though, with a broader network that pulls off even faster download speeds for large files. And Verizon, as we've seen elsewhere in the Northeast, is the citywide reliability king with a solid LTE network, even if it isn't the fastest.

Rural/Suburban

Rural/Suburban: Verizon Wireless 4G LTE

Our "rural/suburban" measure takes into account all of the readings we got while we were on the road between cities. That includes stopping for meals in other mid-sized cities like Cheyenne, WY and Tallahassee, FL; driving on major roads through relatively unpopulated areas like I-8 from Tucson to San Diego; and smaller but busy state roads, like Route 1 in California and FL 60 in Florida.

Here, coverage really mattered, and only one LTE network has nationwide coverage: Verizon 4G LTE. Verizon has covered 95 percent of its national network with 4G LTE, more than 490 markets.

AT&T is second with 278 markets, but it's focusing on cities, with more rural areas left to 3G. AT&T plans to hit nationwide coverage by year-end 2014, a full 18 months after Verizon achieves full coverage. Sprint and T-Mobile are so far nowhere near their bigger competitors when it comes to rural LTE coverage.

That means we had to disqualify AT&T's, Sprint's and T-Mobile's LTE networks from our rural area measurements just because they didn't cover enough of the areas we drove through. With Verizon's LTE network the only one of its kind in the running, it aced every rural/suburban region. This just underscores something everyone understands about wireless networks: They're only useful if you actually have coverage.

If you find Verizon's LTE network too expensive, though, look into T-Mobile. The company covered its national network with HSPA+ a while ago, offering the best experience outside of Verizon's LTE. Unfortunately, none of the players we surveyed offers fast, truly unlimited data with tethering for primary home use; T-Mobile limits tethering, and Sprint's unlimited 3G network is the slowest of the group.

Further Reading