As a recent transplant to the Pacific Northwest, I got a chance to test out 3G in both Seattle and Portland. As you can imagine, most of my stops were in coffee shops.

Maple Leaf (Wednesday, 4pm)
Dining room table at our lovely rental house in this mostly residential upper Seattle neighborhood.

Redmond (Thursday, 4pm)
Hitting the Tully's at Redmond's artificial little town square was daunting for two reasons: one, I was toting not one but two MacBook Pros while surrounded by Microsoft employees, and two, something was blocking most cell towers, so I got poor reception across the board.

Seattle Center (Thursday, 2:30pm)
Sitting under the Space Needle on a chilly day, I got a few funny looks from people, but thankfully no one trying to make friendly conversation.

South Seattle (1pm)
I decided to hit the polar opposite of my neighborhood, so I stopped by Columbia City, a cute little area with restaurants and shops. Somehow, I ended up choosing Starbucks. Don't judge me.

Results
All three carriers held their own except in Redmond, where there was a lack of reception across the board—though somehow AT&T managed stellar uploads anyway. On the flipside, AT&T disappointed at the Space Needle where Verizon did okay and Sprint did great.

Back to main Coast-to-Coast 3G Data Test story

Send an email to Wilson Rothman, the author of this post, at wilson@gizmodo.com.