Search the Community

Pretty cool Visual map by mapbox of iPhone vs Android twitter users. "More than 280 million Tweets posted from mobile phones reveal geographic usage patterns in unprecedented detail" http://www.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/brands/#4/37.37/-102.35

Right now I'm tethered (via the official Sprint Mobile Hotspot app; I bought the 2GB data pack last week) to Sprint LTE via my GSIII in central Fort Worth, specifically 1709 E Hattie St (yes, bad part of town...it's a mission trip). I also have LTE on my iPad on Verizon, plus HSPA+ (not sure if it's dual-carrier) on my T-Mobile ZTE Rocket 3.0. Over the next few days, when I find the time, I'll be pounding all three carriers' networks with speed tests, traceroutes, etc. and will post with the results that I find. Results have been encouraging so far...I've been able to hit 27 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up (see this speedtest result for example: http://www.speedtest...d/214310452.png) on the network while inside one of the buildings here, though I just hit 17 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up on SoftLayer's speedtest while WiFi tethered. Latency-wise, I've hit sub-40ms to SoftLayer in Dallas, which is a good measure of network-specific latency since SoftLayer is extremely well-connected and is pretty much right next door. I'll post a traceroute sometime tomorrow. I just did a quick ping to 4.2.2.4 (Level3 anycasted DNS, with one cluster in Dallas) and hit 25ms at one point. Crazy stuff, for a cellular network. I'm being served (according to NetMonitor) by the tower at 140 Beach St., 2.07 miles away according to Google Maps. The signal from where I'm at right now (on the second floor, inside) is in the high -80s to low -90s according to my system status in Android settings (RSRP I assume?). Side note: it appears as though NetMonitor kicks the hotspot functionality offline :/. One side note: I didn't hit LTE on my trip from DFW to here until maybe ten minutes away. I had eHRPD from the moment I turned my phone on near the E concourse, and speeds were decent (1+ Mbps). But the way we drove I didn't hit 4G until a couple dozen cell sites, and a dozen miles, later (I have my NetMonitor logs turned on). So yeah...I can see why people are kvetching about LTE coverage being nowhere near complete in the DFW market EDIT 1: For some odd reason tethering seems to sporadically drop its connectivity (solution: restart tethering, reconnect my computer). Other than that, the web browsing experience is like I'm sitting on my home connection. Which is saying a lot...I have a $115/mo cable connection hooked to a $130 (today's dollars) 802.11n high power router