The people who test carrier speed claims

When a wireless carrier claims to be the fastest network – or the most reliable, or the fastest 4G or 3G – what are we to make of it? Fastest for whom? In what part of the country? What time of day?

Recently, CNET tried to make sense of these conflicting claims by talking to the CEO of a company that tests such things – RootMetrics. Bill Moore told CNET that RootMetrics spends a lot of time and resources checking network quality. As CNET wrote:

“RootMetrics is nothing if not comprehensive. The firm employs dozens of workers who have driven a total of 130,000 miles, conducted 3.6 million tests, and hit thousands of indoor locations – and that was all just in the first six months of this year.

In addition, RootMetrics tests 24 hours a day, and when it can uses similar phones for different carriers in similar setting. And it records dropped calls – the bane of every cell phone user.

Carriers can make all sorts of speed claims and not be lying, but that doesn’t necessarily benefit the consumer. As Moore said, “Looking at the maximum speed is like looking at a car and its top speed or 0-60 speed. That's just one aspect of the car.”

Want to help check carrier claims? “RootMetrics offers an app that anyone can download to run tests in their own neighborhoods. The firm gets hundreds of millions of data points from hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Since our founding, Speed Matters has been pressing for increased speed and capacity for U.S. broadband subscribers. And, we believe in open and verifiable standards of performance – ones that ordinary consumers can understand and compare. While RootMetrics performs a necessary role, verifiable standards won’t prevail unless everyone – consumers, workers and government – can test and compare.

Read the whole article here.

Meet the firm behind Verizon, AT&T's reliability, speed claims (CNET, Aug. 6, 2013)