Network benchmarking company Rootmetrics has been going through data from its testing during the first half of 2018 and concluded that increasing network data speeds is a clear area of focus for all of the major U.S. carriers.
Rootmetrics dove into its data for the Washington, D.C. metro area, collected in early April, and found that Verizon has significantly improved its network performance there, snagging a sweep of Rootmetrics’ category wins for the first time since 2016. Rootmetrics said that although all of the carriers notched network reliability ratings of 98% or more, Verizon won that category outright. The carrier also won the data performance category, although all of the carriers saw improvements in that area. T-Mobile US clocked the fastest upload speed of 19.5 Mbps, with top median download speeds from T-Mo, AT&T and Verizon ranging between 29.5 Mbps and 31.2 Mbps. Sprint lagged behind those three but still had “big data performance improvements,” Rootmetrics said, increasing its median download speed from 10.2 Mbps to 15.4 Mbps.
“Our analysis of the mobile experience in Washington, D.C. has one big takeaway – data performance is a top priority for the carriers,” said Doug King, director of business development at RootMetrics, in a statement. “Although Verizon takes the top spot in this category, it’s clear that all the networks are making investments to increase speed and reliability, with improvements across the board.”
Rootmetrics said that the testing, using off-the-shelf devices purchased from carrier stores, was conducted between April 2-6 at 119 locations, with more than 2,000 miles of drive-testing.
In other test news:
–EXFO held its inaugural Innovation Summit, gathering experts from the company and from industry in a three-day event in Lac-Beauport, Quebec that included a hackathon. EXFO also recently participated in TM Forum’s Blade Runner Catalyst project, collaborating with companies including AT&T, BT, du Telecom, NTT, Orange, Verizon, Telecom Italia Mobile, Vodafone Group and others on a proof-of-concept for delivering 5G enterprise services end-to-end across partner networks while leveraging edge computing and augmented reality.
–MTS has put together new partnerships to expand its presence in Malaysia and Singapore. The company will work with Quantarad Technologies, which serves industries including automotive and aerospace as well as research and development labs and quality assurance in Malaysia. In Singapore, Quantum Technologies will support MTS’ products and services in the country.
MTS recently reported second fiscal quarter revenues of $191 million, which it said were boosted by strong performance of its sensors business. Test service revenues were up 14% year-over-year, MTS said — but Dr. Jeff Graves, president and CEO of MTS, noted in a statement that overall test performance was mixed and “growth in both materials test and service was strong at 7.8% and 14.1%, respectively, but was offset by weak equipment orders in the ground vehicles test sector.” Net income was $8.4 million, up from $7.2 million in the same period last year.
-German network monitoring company Paessler has a new CTO: Steven Feurer, who has been a member of the company’s advisory board since 2015 and is a developer with two decades of experience in the German tech space. Feurer, who is a U.S. citizen, will work out of Paessler’s headquarters in Nuremberg.
“As CTO, I look forward to maintaining that steadfast focus by providing customers with even greater peace of mind as transformative computing advancements add complexity to networks and make it more important than ever for enterprises to maintain visibility over their IT infrastructure,” he said in a statement.
– Rohde & Schwarz worked with Qualcomm Technologies to extend the capabilities of its R&S CMW500 LTE network simulator and SMBV100Z GNNS simulator to support end-to-end scenarios for cellular vehicle-to-everything device certification testing.
–Samsung is touting recent data from Ookla, creators of Speedtest, which put the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus at the top of the heap as far as device speeds. Ookla said that its testing found that “consumers experience drastically different download speeds, on the same carrier, depending on which device they’re using” — and that the Galaxy’s features enable download speeds that are 37% faster than Apple’s iPhone X and 17% faster than Google’s Pixel 2.
–Dekra is focusing on “safe digitalization” efforts and said that it invested about $176 million in digital testing last year. The company, which is not public, said that its revenues increased 8% year-over-year to about $3.6 billion and that it hired an additional 4,700 employees, bringing its worldwide workforce to more than 44,000. Dekra said that it sees opportunity for digitalization-related testing in cybersecurity needs, autonomous vehicles and “safe mobility.”
