Wired survey: AT&T network to blame for iPhone 3G woes?

Does the new iPhone suffer from iffy 3G reception, or does AT&T just have a spotty 3G network? That's the question Wired sought to answer through an informal survey of iPhone 3G users.

Wired News posted the results of its survey early Monday; in all, more than 2,600 worldwide iPhone 3G users responded, each posting their fastest 3G and EDGE data speeds along with their cities, countries, and GPS coordinates.

Wired helpfully mapped the results here, complete with bars indicating levels of service and the number respondents in a given area. You can also peruse the raw data in this Google spreadsheet.

The results? Overall, European iPhone 3G users—and especially those in Germany and the Netherlands—seemed to get the fastest 3G data speeds (averaging a whopping 2,000Kbps), with the slowest speeds coming from Australia (just 700Kbps). U.S. iPhone users landed somewhere in the middle, although they reported the most "0" speeds (no data access at all); then again, most of the survey respondents (more than 1,600) were from the U.S., so keep that in mind.

Other findings: T-Mobile in Europe appears to be the speediest iPhone carrier (about 1,800Kbps), with Rogers/Fido in Canada coming in second, followed by AT&T, Telstra, Telia, and Softbank (average of 990Kbps). Coming in dead last: Optus and Virgin in Australia, with a pokey 390Kbps average.

Looking at the numbers, it looks like European iPhone 3G users are enjoying pretty snappy data performance compared to those of us in the U.S.—and as Wired notes, Europe has about a three-year head start in terms of 3G HSDPA networks (AT&T didn't launch its HSDPA data network until 2004, compared to 2001 for European carriers).

Wired's conclusion:

In our view, this data is a strong indicator that performance of the mobile carrier's network is affecting the iPhoe 3G more than the handset itself. This also furthers our thesis that it's highly unlikely that Apple is going to wave a magical wand and say, "3G problems, be gone" with a software update."

Interesting stuff—but I'd be even more curious to see how the iPhone 3G compares speed-wise to other 3G handsets on AT&T's HSDPA network.

For example: I happen to have the iPhone 3G and an AT&T 3G-capable Palm Treo Pro right here in my third-floor Manhattan office (in the vicinity of Astor Place).

Using DSL Report's mobile speed test (the testmyiphone.com service used by Wired's guinea pigs will only work on the iPhone), I put the iPhone 3G and the Treo Pro—each using AT&T 3G SIM cards—through their respective paces.

Running the test a total of 10 times for each device—twice with 100K files, three times with 1MB files, and five times with 400K files—the iPhone 3G managed an average download speed of 173Kbps, compared to 293 for the Treo Pro.

Ouch … also, the iPhone 3G peaked at a respectable 523Kbps but dipped as low as 72Kbps, while the Treo peaked at 508Kbps but never slipped below 155Kbps.

Now, a single test conducted by one guy in just one place doesn't prove anything, but I'm not sure how much the Wired test proves either, given the informal nature of the survey and lack of side-by-side device comparisons on the same network. To my mind, the iPhone 3G's reception—or lack thereof—is still open to debate.

So, reactions to Wired's survey? (Make sure to check out the complete report here.) Got your own iPhone 3G speed tests to share? Fire away.

Update: The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports that engineers in Sweden compared the iPhone 3G's reception with that of a Nokia N73 and a Sony Ericsson P1. The result: A "negligible" difference between the three phones, with the iPhone 3G's reception deemed "completely normal." So ... go figure.

Related:
Wired.com's iPhone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses [Wired News]