Tip: Bandwidth Testing for Your Phone

Posted by Doug Smith

September 5, 2008

speedometer Ever wondered how fast your EDGE or 3G connection really is? I have. Just for fun, I’ve decided to share this little tip with you.

You’ve probably heard of DSLReports.com before. They are best known for their broadband testing tools. Most of them are free and they’re easy enough for anyone to use. For a while now DSLReports.com has offered a bandwidth testing service for mobile devices. To check it out just open up your favorite browser on your device and point it to: http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed

If you’re on anything faster than GPRS (I will cry for you if you are not at least on EDGE while you’re trying to surf the web on your device), you will want to run the 100k test. If you’re on 3G there’s a good chance you’ll be prompted to choose a “heavier” test because the results of the 100k test were too fast to provide a reliable result. In that case you can shoot for the 1MB test.

A bit of a disclaimer: While these results are kind of interesting and may pleasantly surprise you from time to time, don’t expect them to be as consistent as they would be on a DSL or cable broadband setup. Due to the way cellular data works your results will likely vary wildly even when tests are run back to back within a short period of time.

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