There were reports that AT&T upgraded its EDGE network ahead of the iPhone’s release, though their work was only to ensure a higher minimum speed — 80 kb/s up from 40 kb/s. More interestingly is that people already using EDGE devices noticed the network’s average speed improved as well. EDGE has a theoretical max of 200 kb/s, and AT&T has stated that people should expect around 130 kb/s. It’d be useful to know just how slow EDGE in Boston really is.

Here are my results so far, using the mobile speed test from dslreports.com.

• Quincy Center (~150 kbit/s with 5 bars of signal strength)
  

  kbit/s	latency (s)	total (s)	size
  153	1.057	6.12	100k
  163	0.894	5.797	100k
  144	0.975	12.068	200k
  149	0.976	11.669	200k
  129	1.033	38.024	600k
  151	1.038	32.641	600k
  failed			1MB
  failed			1MB
  152	1.277	54.793	1MB
  143	1.032	58.099	1MB