Verizon LTE Speed Test: Insanely Fast [4G]

Verizon’s first LTE dongle is startlingly large. But not as startling as the velocity.

These results are spot tests from all across the country: The Big Apple (Gizmodo & Engadget ), Seattle ( MSNBC ), Philadelphia ( GigaOM ), Arizona ( SlashGear ) and Boston ( NetworkWorld ). And they paint an attractive remarkable picture. Lots of the ” slow” results-around 7-9Mbps downstream-are with a trifling two bars of signal. MSNBC’s crazy, fiber-fast speeds? Totally legit, Verizon told MSNBC.com super editor and Coors Light fanboy Wilson Rothman .

Our own results are from deep within Gizmodo HQ in SoHo in downtown Manhattan, the typical of five speed tests. By comparison, our WiMax dongle from an analogous spot averaged an insignificant 2.7Mbps downstream and a couple of.8Mbps upstream, and the strength of the signal seemed a touch shakier. LTE is the genuine deal-at the moment anyway, while there’s nobody but lucky tech journos stealing all of the internets. We’ll must see how well it holds up as more people pile on, but the initial results are stunning, to claim the least.

The experience of getting it installed is a bit of less fabulous. It’s Windows-only for now (changing soon, hopefully!), and Verizon’s Access Manager is a terrible little piece of software which isn’t even bundled on the dongle. The dongle itself is wide and bulbous, a return to the USB dongles of three years ago that eat up gobs of real estate on the side of your PC. (The Clearwire WiMax dongle is a complicated affair by comparison, a metallic circle, drivers all neatly bundled.) Dear lord, we will’t wait until there’s an LTE MiFi card.

In the meantime, just be amazed at these speeds, finally available in America. Whether you wanna call it 4G or not, the secret is that it’s damn fast. [ Engadget , MSNBC , Slashgear , Network World , GigaOM ]

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This post is tagged: coors light, downtown manhattan, initial results, networkworld, speed tests, spot tests