Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg (yes, him), took some time out of his busy Apple dominated schedule to review the less interesting parts of wireless networks.  That less interesting part being the actual network.  In his test, he compared the new 3G iPhone 4 with the MyTouch Slide and the webConnect Rocket with Verizon’s UM175 modem.  He found that T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network beat the competition in all the tests.  His results are as follows:

In each spot, I did 10 tests of the devices and averaged their speeds. At the first location, the T-Mobile Slide barely edged out the iPhone, with a download speed averaging 2.84 mbps versus the iPhone’s 2.74 mbps. At the second location, however, the Slide’s edge grew, with an average download speed of 4.26 mbps versus 3.65 mbps for the Apple product.

The laptop tests were much more dramatic. At my first test location, the T-Mobile Rocket drove the ThinkPad to an average download speed of 4.88 megabits per second, versus just 1.36 megabits per second for the Verizon data modem. At the second location, the Rocket achieved an average download speed on the laptop of 6.15 mbps versus 1.58 mbps for Verizon’s modem.

The only disclaimer is that these tests were performed in areas were T-Mobile’s network is strong and HSPA+ ready.  I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to the development of this network and a real HSPA+ phone.  Leave your thoughts in the comments!

WSJ