The folks at Verizon may be throwing out a lot of high fives today, as the company’s 4G LTE network has topped PC Mag’ nationwide speedtest for mobile data.

Not only did it produce the fastest download speeds on an average basis, PC Mag said:

But you shouldn’t believe the hype: All “4G” is not the same. In a 21-city test across the United States, we found that Verizon’s new 4G LTE network is much faster than other mobile Web options, with speeds that often exceed home Internet connections.

As you can see from the chart below, the Verizon 4G LTE walloped the competition with an average download speed of 9.46 Mbps down (max speed of over 37 Mbps!) and 1.35 up. Big Red’s network performed the best in nearly every region except for “Rural America” where AT&T was the king.

With average speeds of 3.70 Mbps down and 1.09 up, the T-Mobile HSPA+ 4G network performed the second best in the nation, according to the test. AT&T and Sprint were about even – Sprint had faster download speeds and AT&T had faster upload speeds.

So, it’s clear that Verizon 4G LTE is the big winner when it comes to speeds but what’s interesting to me is that all of the major carriers have significantly improved since a similar test last year. AT&T was considered the best at this point last year with a now-meager 1.79 Mbps down and that’s near the bottom today.

I guess there is something to be said about clarifying what 4G means but this push into the next generation has definitely lifted all boats. I can’t wait to see what happens once AT&T actually rolls out its LTE network and T-Mobile gets some 42 Mbps handsets on the market.

Let us know what you think friends and what you’re getting and where. For the record, on this LG Revolution in San Francisco, I’m consistently getting 8 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up.