Is EDGE really that slow?

[Downer]

Sounds really like a dial-up modem:



"But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=e69c089c4d547a48&ex=118386720

 

[Kev1000000]

Its not too bad. As long as the page's CSS and images are cached, its pretty fast. And you can navigate a page before its finished loading.

 

[applefreak]

It's not as slow as dial-up but it's pretty goddamn slow. I really try only to limit my use to gmail, text, etc when on edge. Youtube has gotten very slow ever since everyone activated their phones...big difference from the first 2 days. On wifi the phone just flies though. I'm definitely trading up to a 3G iPhone whenever it comes out.

 

[ccr78]

It's not as slow as dial-up but it's pretty goddamn slow. I really try only to limit my use to gmail, text, etc when on edge. Youtube has gotten very slow ever since everyone activated their phones...big difference from the first 2 days. On wifi the phone just flies though. I'm definitely trading up to a 3G iPhone whenever it comes out.

Same here, the day a 3g iPhone is released I am picking one up.

Personally, edge isn't *that* bad, but it is still slow.

 

[applefreak]

Reminds me of ISDN and according to ATT, that's about par for the course in terms of bitrate.

 

[travelgirl]

Maybe it's because of where I'm located (WV) but it's really not that slow here. We have wifi in the house and I don't notice THAT much of a difference when I leave the house. I even went on that site to determine the speed of download and it was rated very good (or whatever the one lower than "awesome" is).

 

[applefreak]

Well wifi is only as fast as the pipeline feeding it. For example, wifi on dsl is still just dsl. Rating sites usually grade you based on your locale's average speeds.

ATT's Edge network after the $50 mil in upgrades is still only as fast as 400 kbps in the fastest metro areas. That's low grade dsl in optimum conditions. Then you have to figure in all the traffic eating up that bandwidth.

 

[wjp09]

Well wifi is only as fast as the pipeline feeding it. For example, wifi on dsl is still just dsl. Rating sites usually grade you based on your locale's average speeds.

ATT's Edge network after the $50 mil in upgrades is still only as fast as 400 kbps in the fastest metro areas. That's low grade dsl in optimum conditions. Then you have to figure in all the traffic eating up that bandwidth.

check your speed on iPhonenetworktest.com

I had 200kbs

 

[ColsTiger]

It's pretty slow compared to your broadband or dsl connection. It's much faster than GPRS like you would get with a standard RAZR V3, but it's still slow.

 

[gcvt]

I don't know if it has anything to do with location, but EDGE in San Francisco isn't bad at all. Sure, it's no DSL like so many of us are used to but it works fine for my needs.

 

[fitz62]

i guess it also depends on where you are? at home in LI the speeds are kinda sluggisg at times but when i go to the city, it zooms along nicely.