PC Mag geared up two Ford C-Max Energi cars, and one Ford Fusion Energi and embarked on a 20,000 mile road trip to test AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.

PC Mag says overall, they found AT&T's LTE network to be the fastest of the group, but Verizon Wireless typically triumphed on our reliability gauges. T-Mobile's new LTE network looked great in the few cities where we could find it, and it has the best backup in T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. Sprint, just like in 2012, didn't win any cities, but it's on an upward trend by switching from obsolete WiMAX to a fresh LTE system.

Salshgear explains that it was AT&T’s 4G LTE network that appeared to show the fastest data speeds most often. In the Northeast region, AT&T LTE beat out the competition with an average download speed of 16.02 Mbits/second where second place went to T-Mobile’s budding LTE network at 13.11 Mbits/second on average. Verizon’s top download speed at 53.38 Mbits/second nearly edged out AT&T’s 58.25 and beat out AT&T with a time of 194.10ms “average time to first byte” (AT&T hit this at 236.27ms).



This is all great news, because it means competition is working. While none of the wireless carriers offers a perfect 4G experience, they're all working hard and delivering better networks than they did last year. There's one thing clear, though: If you have an older 3G phone and you're in an LTE coverage area, upgrade to an LTE phone right now. The difference in data performance is dramatic.