My Obsessive Verizon LTE iPad Testing Continues

I confess I am obsessed with trying to figure out why Verizon LTE is so sucky on our two brand-new iPads.  Yesterday, we were at the dentist’s office in Jersey City and I asked Janna to pull out her iPad to see what kind of service levels we were getting.  Our dentist is one block away from our home where I was getting two Verizon LTE bars and 1.7Mbps down and 1.47Mpbs up.  At the dentist’s office, the iPad was screaming at 25.94Mbps down and 10.35Mbps up with four bars of Verizon LTE active!  Amazing!  An outrage!

I was happy, but confused, by those superfast Verizon LTE performance speeds.  Why does one city block mean a 25 times increase in connectivity speed?  That suggests to me that Verizon LTE is finicky and unpredictable.

Later in the afternoon, we tested Janna’s iPad at a local park that is one block away from our dentist’s office and one block away from our home: Triangulation in action!  Take a look at these outrageous speeds!  31.78Mbps down and 11.81Mbps up at five full bars of Verizon LTE!  What’s going on here?

Later last night when we were back home, I tested my Verizon LTE connection on my iPad in our bedroom and I had exactly the same connectivity problems as previously reported.  Verizon LTE was not available and the signal fell back to 3G territory.  Ugh!

Then I decided to go to the front of our home and stand by the window and point my iPad in the direction of the park where Janna received her terrific numbers on her iPad hours earlier.  One block away from the park, I had these results: 18.37Mbps down and 3.95Mpbs up with three Verizon LTE bars.

Those results, while encouraging, are still confusing.  Going 100 feet from our bedroom to the front room results in a 20-times increase in speed going from 3G to LTE?  That tells me Verizon LTE does not like being inside because building penetration is no good and that the LTE signal is narrow and non-saturating.

Today, Janna and I went back to the park where we had such great success with her iPad and we used my iPad for testing.  Can you believe these speeds?  Five Verizon LTE bars of connectivity delivered 35.13Mbps down and 9.76Mbps up!

Those numbers are crazy. Wonderful. Disappointing. I want those numbers at home where I work, not a block away in a public park. Verizon can deliver great LTE speeds, but only in a very specific circumstances that depend more on where you’re located and not where you want to actually use your iPad. Let’s hope Verizon soon fixes that inequity in their LTE delivery.