Surprising results of network performance study
If you live in southern New York state you probably have a good idea as to the answer to the question in the headline of this article. A RootMetrics study said the Hudson Valley in southern New York state has the worst wireless network performance in the country.
“I use AT&T, and the service in the Poughquag area is quite poor,” Bill Pepe told the Poughkeepsie Journal. “I usually only receive one or two signal bars at all times.”
Hudson Valley ranked last out of 125 areas studied, which took into account overall network performance, network speed, network reliability, data performance, call performance and text performance.
The study found Hudson Valley ranked in the bottom five in all six categories. “Unfortunately for those in Hudson Valley, the poor performances we saw in the first half of 2015 are consistent with what we found in the first half of 2014, when Hudson Valley also fell to the bottom of our rankings,” the study said.
Aside from the constant frustration of an unreliable network, there are also major implications to public safety and officials have taken note.
“Dutchess County’s Emergency Response system is hindered by the lack of cellular service, in part because you can’t triangulate phone calls,” county executive Marc Molinaro told a local media outlet. “When you call 911, you might very well be redirected to a state police dispatch who then physically, through a manual operation, has to transfer you back to 911.”
Denver took home the title of worst network among major metros. The study found that “the only large sized city ranked near the bottom of our most recent metro area comparison was Denver. The nation’s 18th-largest metro area, Denver finished as No. 122 for network speed and No. 121 for data performance in our mobile performance rankings.”
And apparently Denver isn’t the only Colorado city with coverage problems. Colorado Springs also ranked near the bottom at No. 122. El Paso, Texas; Omaha, Neb.; Reno, Nev.; and of course, the Hudson Valley, rounded out the bottom five areas.
Atlanta; Chicago; Knoxville and Nashville, Tenn.; and Jacksonville, Fla. received the survey’s best scores.
The study tested mobile performance indoors, outdoors and on the road. Researchers performed the test night and day on two separate occasions.
As far as carriers go, Verizon Wireless was yet again tops in RootMetrics ranking of carrier performance across the U.S., scoring first-place results in five of the six separate categories through the first half of 2015, though the analytics firm noted a tightening of the overall spread among the four nationwide operators.
A slightly larger gap was present to No. 3 finisher Sprint, which despite ongoing network challenges managed a strong victory over rival T-Mobile US in overall performance. Sprint also garnered the third spot in network reliability, call performance and text performance, with RootMetrics noting Sprint “showed progress in terms of closing the gap with the leaders from prior testing.”
