Is AT&T dialing back 4G speeds on Windows Phones?

Samsung Focus S Bandwidth Test

There's an interesting discussion going on in the WPCentral Forums concerning HSDPA speeds on the AT&T HTC Titan. Forum Member gtg465x is witnessing faster bandwidth speeds on Android based phone than his HTC Titan. Speeds of ii-3Mbps are being witnessed on the Titan while the Android phones are experiencing 3-4Mbps. In areas where there is advanced backhaul in place the Titan tests at 4Mbps while Android jumps to viii-10Mbps. As well, Rob41664 & jawesome are reporting faster speeds with the Focus S over their Titans. According to the give-and-take,

After extensive testing, I'thousand quite positive AT&T is artificially limiting network speed on their version of the Titan by limiting the HSDPA feature set to category 8. The telephone hardware of course is able to support HSDPA category 10 features.

Turns out AT&T has a history of doing this, specifically with the LG Thrill, a "4G" phone prepare at category 8. People plain bumped it to ten and nearly doubled their data throughput. The theoretical maximum throughput for category ten is 14.1Mbps. The theoretical maximum throughput of category viii is 7.2Mbps.

So the question is: What is the HSDPA category of AT&T's Windows Phones? We can't actually know, because unlike Anroid, we can't see allow alone alter that information. Nevertheless, we wanted to meet if the Titan was slower than the Focus S.

Dan (NYC) and I (Alabama) both tested out AT&T Titans up against the Samsung Focus S and T-Mobile'due south HTC Radar (we don't have any Android's here). We both used Bandwidth for the testing and the tests were conducted indoors with the phone untouched during testing. Here's our test results (first number is download speeds, 2d is upload speeds).

From these results, we so no difference betwixt the Focus S and the Titan--the master concern of the original forum thread. It might not accept been a fair fight comparison the Radar with the AT&T Windows Phones but it is articulate that AT&T'south "4G" speeds stake in comparison to T-Mobiles--important if y'all're considering a new network. Moreover, it is obvious that AT&T "4G" Windows Phones don't actually become very fast speeds, whatever their settings may be.

Yet, if Android devices are testing at 8-10Mbps, or even 4Mbps, could AT&T be dialing back bandwidth on Windows Phone in full general with a lower HSDPA category? Or is it something else?

Cheers goes out to Tommy for tipping us on this!