Let's get this straight right away: We didn't test dropped voice calls, we didn't test customer service, and we didn't test map coverage by wandering around in the boonies. We tested the ability of the networks to deliver 3G data in and around cities, including both concrete canyons and picket-fenced 'burbs. And while every 3G network gave us troubles on occasion, AT&T's wasn't measurably more or less reliable than Verizon's.

It was measurably faster, however, download-wise, in 6 of the 12 markets where we tested, and held a significantly higher national average than the other carriers. Only Verizon came close, winning 4 of the 12 markets. For downloads, AT&T and Verizon came in first or second in nine markets, and in whatever location we tested, both AT&T and Verizon 3G were consistently present. If you're wondering about upload speeds, AT&T swept the contest, winning 12 for 12.

The Cities

Last year, we did an 8-city coast-to-coast test, and called Sprint the big winner. This year, we have results from 11 cities coast-to-coast, and even got to test (during what was otherwise vacation time) on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Also, unlike last year, we were able to test T-Mobile's new 3G network, active in all the markets we visited (except, at the time, Maui). For being such a latecomer, T-Mo did well, and the numbers show even more promise from them.

We tried to spread the love around this year, geographically, hitting cities we didn't get to last year (at the cost of losing a few from '08). Besides Maui, we hit Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco/Bay Area and Tampa.

The Methodology

Our testing regimen was based on the same scheme as last year: We picked five locations in each city, including at least one "downtown" location that was considered a suburb. The selections were arbitrary, or fixed but logical—landmarks, residences, etc. (Note: Due to timing constraints, Chicago and Maui only had three test locations.)

Our hardware consisted of two identical stripped-down Acer Timeline laptops running Windows Vista, and four 3G wireless modems requested from the carriers. We allowed them to make the choice of hardware, simply asking for their "best performing" model. Once up and running, here are the tests we ran:

• Bandwidth & Latency: Speedtest.net - Reports upload and download bandwidth in megabits per second, as well as ping latency in milliseconds. We performed this test five times at each location on each modem.

• Pageload: Hubble images at Wikimedia - A 4.42MB web page with 200 4KB thumbnails, it was fully reloaded three times, and timed using the Firefox plug-in YSlow. The three time readings were averaged.

• Download: Wikimedia's Abell 2667 galaxy cluster photo - This single 7.48MB JPEG is a clear test of how fast you can download stuff from the cloud, and again, we hard refreshed this file three times, and measured time using YSlow for an accurate human-error-free reading.

This was a test of 3G performance. Even though Sprint and its tech partner Clearwire have intrepidly released 4G networks in half of the tested markets—Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Maui, Portland and Seattle—we only tested Sprint's 3G network. The reason should be obvious: While we performed the test with laptop cards on PCs, it's supposed to serve as a test of the network's ability to deliver service to all devices, including smartphones, dumbphones and laptops. Show us a Palm Pre WiMax edition—better yet, sell 100,000 of them—and then we'll switch it up. And while you may argue that this 3G test still doesn't adequately reflect your experience with your iPhone, at least it's the same network, and may serve to rule out AT&T's data pipe as the independent cause for all those infamous dropped calls.

(On a side note, when multiple carriers release 4G networks, we'll definitely conduct a comparative test of them all, using new parameters, and focused around laptop use.)

The Results

Now that you know how we ran the test, here are the top finishers in each market, plus some pretty bar graphs showing you how bandwidth compares.

Though we tested for uploads and downloads, we focused our additional tests on the downstream, as it's the more important direction, in the minds of most consumers and most carriers. The anomaly there is AT&T, which has dramatically good upload bandwidth, even when its download bandwidth doesn't keep up. Fast uploads are a priority for AT&T, and will soon be for T-Mobile, which recently turned on faster uploading in NYC, which you can see in our test results. Meanwhile, although Verizon technically came in second in uploads as well as downloads, it doesn't seem to treat this as a major priority.

When it came to downloads, though, the competition was markedly stiffer:

Atlanta - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Bay Area/San Francisco - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Chicago - AT&T, followed by Verizon then Sprint
Denver - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Las Vegas - Verizon, followed by AT&T
Los Angeles - AT&T, followed by Sprint
Maui - Verizon, followed by AT&T
New York - AT&T, followed by T-Mobile
Phoenix - Verizon, followed by T-Mobile
Portland - T-Mobile, followed by Verizon
Seattle - Verizon, followed by T-Mobile
Tampa - Sprint, followed by AT&T

Is That The End?

No. We've compiled the following gallery with all the data from each test location in the 12 markets, so you can see on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level who won what. This also includes latency, pageload and download numbers, so you can track the performance in several ways. (The data above is bandwidth, though as you'll see, that was generally representative of the overall performance. If a carrier was tops in bandwidth, it was usually tops in download time.) These tests are all just "snapshots in time," as the carriers like to say, so feel free to bitch about where your experience doesn't reflect our results. We stand by them, but acknowledge that network performance is changing all the time, and experiences very regular hiccups.

Regarding latency, you'll notice it didn't appear to affect actual user experience—3G isn't really up for Modern Warfare 2, if that's what you're thinking—we will gladly show you latency averages, as well as pageload and file download averages, broken out for every market on the test.

Special thanks to all of the excellent testers we enlisted, Mark Wilson, Chris Mascari, John Herrman, Kyle VanHemert, Dan Nosowitz, Matt Buchanan and Rosa Golijan from our own team, along with Tamara Chadima and the indefatigable Dennis Tarwood. You guys were troopers, and I'm pretty sure FedEx either loves you or hates you. Thanks to John Mahoney for helping develop the initial tests that we've continually refined, to Chris Jacob for mapping all the locations, and to Don Nguyen for the mad number crunching—you truly are a spreadsheet pimp.

Note: Some of you may have noticed that San Diego is among the cities highlighted on the top illustration—and that Maui is not. The reason is that while we did testing in three great San Diego locations, one of the locations didn't get any Sprint or T-Mobile service, and the already fairly thin dataset was rendered too compromised for any kind of usable report. As for Maui's absence, Maui's just too far out in the Pacific to make for a pretty map shot.

Joining the flagship London store on Regent Street which announced its closure two days ago, Nokia was hit with criticisms by analysts, including this stinging remark from John Strand, chief executive of Strand Consult:

"Flagship stores are important in fashion industry: Apple is fashion. Nokia is consumer electronics"

Double ouch. [Reuters]

The architects, however, say that the Aqua Tower is inspired by the limestone outcroppings in the Great Lakes.

Whatever the inspiration was, the building is pretty. Not as pretty as the lençóis, but pretty enough. [Archdaily]

The pictured subway station is located on North Avenue in Chicago, next to a future Apple store location. While Apple's stipulation that the subway station renovations be completed by September 30, 2010 gives us a bit of a hunch as to when the store might open, it still remains a mystery exactly why the company is pouring so much money into prettying up a corner of Chicago. According to the agreement they're not getting very much out of it:

[I]n exchange for the improvements the CTA will lease the bus turnaround to Apple at no cost for 10 years, with options on four, five-year extensions. The CTA will also give Apple "first rights of refusal" for naming the station and placing advertising within the station, if the CTA later decides to offer those rights.

Alright, and Apple intends on making that bus turnaround into a "landscaped public park," so there's no profit to be found there and the "first rights of refusal" are worthless if the CTA never actually decides to offer any of those advertising options and rights. It almost seems as if Apple's doing this for the warm fuzzy feeling that comes out of doing something incredibly wonderful for a city's development. I'm proud of you, Apple, but I still think Bill Gates is cooler for trying to cure malaria with candy. [ifoAppleStore via Mac Rumors]

Supposedly Nunnmps is elevated on stilt-like construction in order to preserve the secrecy of the research it will house and it's hard to believe that anything of evil nature would occur in such a peaceful-looking place. But maybe that's the brilliance of the design. Frankly, I don't even want to know what'll go on in there, I just want to know how to pronounce it. [Dazeen]

Phonevision wasn't exactly a home theater PC or a Roku box, and actually had more in common with something like Pay Per View: It had three scheduled showings each evening, and you called and ordered one of the few options offered at a cost of one dollar per film. The set-top box would unscramble the picture and allow the movie to be watched on your TV. It was also limited to about 300 test subjects in the Chicago area, but they apparently loved it and Zenith was very excited about the prospects of moving "the theater into the living room." But what, you might ask, were the choices on this very early service?

The 300 Phonevision subscribers had an initial choice of April Showers, a 1948 musical starring Jack Carson; Welcome Stranger, a 1947 Bing Crosby comedy, and 1948's Homecoming, with Clark Gable and Lana Turner.

Interestingly, while the industry called Phonevision a "massive flop," Zenith president Eugene F. Macdonald loved it and considered it a rousing success, though it never penetrated very many markets and was officially cancelled in 1969. [Time, image from Early Television]

The 3GS turned out to be slightly faster in downloads (1202kbps vs. 1161kbps), but just about the same in uploads. Its latency was much better 175ms vs. 210ms, which reflects the same thing we found in our iPhone 3GS review and is probably attributable to its faster processor.

Either AT&T's 7.2Mbps isn't really widely deployed yet even in Chicago, a city they've been running deployment tests on for a few months now, or it makes no real difference in everyday usage. We'll test this again once 7.2Mbps gets rolled out to more cities to find out which.

And if you're still not sure about what 3G speeds mean, or the differences between different phone techs, see our Giz explainer on all the mobile terms. And the next generation technology? 4G? See what's coming up in that explainer. [Thanks to all our readers who participated!]

Update: AT&T tells us that the trial is only live in Chicago on a handful of cell sites and on an internal basis, so none of you guys should be connecting to the faster network. The public trials are coming later this year, so it makes sense that the speeds are exactly the same.

It wouldn't matter if you ran the light or were driving conscientiously. The proposed system would exploit both existing stoplight cameras and general security cameras to scan your plate and hand it over to the InsureNet database. If InsureNet discovered that you were lacking insurance, you'd receive a $300-$500 ticket in the mail.

The system is anticipated to raise yearly earnings "well in excess" of $100 million (possibly even double that figure or more), with InsureNet taking a modest 30% for their services. Of course, all of this cash would be contingent on uninsured drivers actually paying their fines. [Chicago Sun-Times via ars technica and Getty]

I should clarify, it's the building's New York owners, a point that the Sun-Times was sure to slip in to the source article, knowing it would get Chicagoans good and riled up.

OK, so it totally worked in my case.

No slight to New York because I love do the city, but the source of origin explains a lot. Like the new Trump tower that's burdening our iconic skyline with shiny anonymity, so too would NY's metallic gloss rebrand the Sears Tower as just another uninspired phallus aimed for the sky.

Luckily, the owners, who are said to be considering updating the landmark's facade to rekindle interest in the building, cannot possibly have the $50 million necessary for the renovation in this economy. So hahahahaha. Hahahahhaha. Chicago wins! For now. [Chicago Sun-Times]

For Gizmodo's tour of Chicago, I tested the Southside, Northside and sort of Middleside of the city. So I started in the lot of Comiskey Park (Go Sox), checked out reception a two blocks east of Michigan Ave by the Water Tower and then finished things off at a Starbucks in Wrigleyville (Clark & Belmont). It's sort of like our own Crosstown Classic, minus the urinal trough with some shopping sprinkled in.

Results
On downloads, Verizon won two contests, while Sprint won one. AT&T never managed to grab a brass ring. Even in uploads, where AT&T is strong, it only managed to win one round. Verizon isn't the clear winner, though, since the downtown location (Streeterville) caused reception difficulties.

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

They're a non-profit company, which means they only charge the cost of manufacturing the device, $50, but the reading and math programs cost $20 per student. The initial rollout will be at 500 Chicago elementary schools. We'll have a quick hands-on of this later—not with an actual K-2 student, but just someone with a K-2 student's intellect (me). [Teachermate]

For instance, the system will be able to send out an alert if it locates a stolen car or even a missing child. It's too bad this seems just a little too smart, if you ask us. Like, who gets to determine what the network tracks? Sure, right now it's just Amber Alerts and stolen cars, but what happens when it starts following people who don't particularly like the current administration or have ideas that are deemed "too" radical? While we love our technology and the feeling of being safe and protected, we also like doing as we please without being watched. [Yahoo News, Photo courtesy of the AP]

We throw around the phrase "intellectual property" commonly, as we bitch about patents, lawsuits and other industry jargon (as we did earlier today in a post about the Wiimote). It's one of those concepts that's tough to grasp because the property itself so often digresses to an idea pissing match between monolithic corporations and lawyer speak. Then you hear about a story like this one. – Mark Wilson

Chicago Gunman Angry Over Patent [sfgate]

Reader Nick informs us that class warfare was rampant at the Nokia Store in Chicago. However, like the Samsung "store" here in New York, we're pretty sure this designed to be uber-swanky and actually pretty cool when they let people in.

They had an uber-swanky party that I wasn't allowed into last night filled with douchebags in sportcoats and hawt women who looked like they used the Motorola RAZR. Between that and the local media, I was able to piece together that they will have a Vertu store inside of the Nokia store, just so, you know - if you wanted to drop 20 large on a phone after shopping at The Gap next door, you can.

Chicago to Open Nokia Store [Gizmodo]

Nokia to open first US cell phone store in Chicago [Reuters via Yahoo!]