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Which borough has the fastest 4G in NYC? Sorry Manhattan, it’s the Bronx

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:33:31 +0000

Manhattan may have the most high-powered corporations in the world, but it doesn’t even have the most powerful mobile data networks in New York City. That distinction goes to the borough on the other side of the Harlem River.

A recent round of speed and performance tests in New York from RootMetrics revealed that data speeds from mobile broadband networks averaged 13.5 Mbps, nearly 2 Mbps faster than any in any of the other four boroughs. The home of the Yankees also clocked the best upload speeds in the city, averaging 5.8 Mbps.

Manhattan actually had the lowest download speeds of the five, though it sat right in the middle in terms of upload. It’s doubtful that the big four operators are neglecting Manhattan. Rather, its lower performance is probably a reflection of its much greater density of people and smartphones along with the difficulty of finding tower space in the overbuilt borough.

When broken down by carrier, things get interesting. In all five boroughs, Root recorded the fastest average speeds on AT&T’s LTE networks. Verizon’s LTE came in second in all five cases, while T-Mobile and Sprint were a distant third and fourth respectively (neither carrier has LTE in NYC yet). But in Root’s overall testing of the NYC metro region – which by Root’s definition spans northern New Jersey, bits of southern New York and most of Long Island — Verizon came away with the speed prize, averaging 13.4 Mbps to AT&T’s 10.3 Mbps. While AT&T has built LTE over ever inch of NYC, that coverage seems to fall off when you leave the city.

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Power unites: New Yorkers come together, charge together

Jeff John Roberts — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:01:51 +0000

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the teeming streets of lower Manhattan have become an eerie, empty wasteland. Amidst the cold and the dark, the most pressing need is not for food or water — but for power to charge phones and laptops.

Fortunately, New Yorkers are looking out for each other as they always do. Outside bars and bodegas, merchants with generators are sharing them with residents who need to charge up and contact the outside world. This was the scene near Avenue A in the East Village where Percy’s Tavern set up tables with dozens of power outlets to use free of charge:

Similar scenes played out in front of hairdressers and coffee shops around the blacked out part of the city. Strangely, for this week at least, the cell phone habits of many New Yorkers resemble those of rural Africans who regularly pay small sums to charge their mobile devices from a generator.

The situation in Manhattan also highlights how, in a crisis, the city’s post-industrial economy still ultimately depends on very industrial fuels like diesel. (To see how we might one day progress beyond this, see the excellent reporting by Katie Fehrenbacher earlier this week.)

Finally, this scene on 2nd Avenue shows that water is also an issue for some New Yorkers in the black out zone:

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AT&T shows more free Wi-Fi love to NYC parks

Ryan Kim — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:45:09 +0000

So living in the biggest city in the U.S. can be tough at times, what with the hurricanes, earthquakes, Wall Street protests and whatnot. But at least we’ve got some free Wi-Fi!

AT&T announced on Tuesday that it’s extending free Wi-Fi to five more New York parks, part of the plan to bring Wi-Fi to 26 locations in 20 parks spread throughout the five boroughs of New York. The new sites are Astoria Park, in Queens; Herbert Von King Park and McCarren Park Field House, in Brooklyn; Tompkins Square Park, in Manhattan; and Clove Lakes Park, in Staten Island.

They join existing free AT&T Wi-Fi installations at Battery Park; Rumsey Playfield; areas of Thomas Jefferson Park, in East Harlem; and Joyce Kilmer Park, in the Bronx, which were all launched this past summer. The park Wi-Fi hotspots complement larger Wi-Fi hot zones that AT&T has built in Times Square and areas around Midtown and are part of AT&T’s nationwide network of 27,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.

As we’ve mentioned, this isn’t just goodwill by a big carrier. These Wi-Fi networks are helpful in relieving traffic from overworked cellular networks. And they present opportunities to advertise as well. Ultimately, carriers will start to plug in Wi-Fi as part of a bigger heterogeneous network that utilizes a range of technologies to provide broader connectivity to users.

With Wi-Fi roaming technology maturing, it will allow users to easily jump onto Wi-Fi networks seamlessly, so they won’t even know when they’re moving between networks. Having a built-out network of Wi-Fi will become a major asset for carriers. So expect to see more hotspots like this pop up, though we’ll have to see if they’ll all be free in the future.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Ed Yourdon

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