Point Pleasant Beach Trip

Over the past weekend, our family spent some time in Point Pleasant Beach in NJ.  Being Summertime, the beach was very crowded (especially on the boardwalk area).  I wanted to see how the networks held up on Friday evening and Saturday morning.

When arriving to the boardwalk on Friday evening, I ran some speed tests on the three networks.  On the tests I ran from my main phone (Iphone 12), I was impressed with the speeds I was getting from Verizon/Visible.  I would say Verizon was the most consistent during my time there.  At times, I would see over 200Mbps down.  The speed test results shown below do not take into account the fact that the other networks (AT&T and T-Mobile) showed more inconsistency with slow speeds from time to time.  Verizon did not show this as much.

I will include screen shots of some speed tests that were run and the field test menu from my Iphone for each carrier.  

Verizon/Visible (Friday Evening)

Mint/T-Mobile (Friday Evening)

AT&T (Friday Evening)

On the Jenkinson boardwalk, I was able to spot what looks to be a Sprint B41 and AT&T site (this is based on what I could tell from Cellmapper so I could be wrong).  It appears that Sprint was aiming to get a lot of cell density on the beach at one point in time (based on the Cellmapper screenshot below).  I do not have a native-Sprint phone and it didn't appear as though T-Mobile converted these sites yet.

The average RSRQ/quality for T-Mobile was the worst on the boardwalk during peak times (Friday evening and Saturday morning) averaging around -16.  AT&T and Verizon faired slightly better.  The screenshot below shows Saturday morning.  The beach started getting busy around 9AM or so.  The traffic descreased in the afternoon due to the pending storm.  I think I see some patterns here (or maybe it's my imagination)?

T-Mobile RSRQ (Saturday Morning on beach)

Verizon RSRQ (Saturday Morning on Beach)

AT&T (Saturday Morning on Beach)

For the entire weekend (including trip from and to beach), here were some stats that were obtained from my Samsung phones (running G-NetReport Pro)

Average RSRQ

Verizon (-13)
AT&T (-11)
T-Mobile (-11)

Download Speeds (Max)
Unfortunately, do a mistake on my part, I was unable to gather download metrics for T-Mobile during this trip (other than the speedtest results I showed above).

Verizon 79 Mbps (1230 AM Saturday morning from hotel)
AT&T 78 Mbps (730PM Friday night)

Download Speeds (Average)

AT&T (27.8 Mbps)

Verizon (43.4 Mbps)

Dead Spots/Bad Quality

Verizon

NJ-70 (Brick Boulevard) just South of Burnt Tavern Road

AT&T (Various Spots)

T-Mobile (A few Congestion Issues but Nothing Major)

Synapsis

Verizon seemed to be the best once I reached my destination (boardwalk) but remained consistent throughout the entire trip with great download speeds.  I stand by some points I made previously in regards to Verizon.  Verizon does have some problems right now with dead spots and capacity (their RSRQ tends to average a little higher than the other carriers), but they have a lot of things going right with them.  Their speeds in my home area have at least doubled over the last couple of months (used to be around 25Mbps but now climbing to 50Mbps or higher more consistently).

AT&T is has good data quality.  The download speeds in my area are consistently fast (200Mbps or higher), I don't notice as much deviation when I run tests.  There are times (more recently) in my travels where it appears AT&T is having some signal/quality issues but they seem to recover and it doesn't tend to affect the overall results too much.

T-Mobile is very exciting and making lots of news with the 5G networks but I've been encountering some issues with them in regards to consistency.  As I mentioned previously, there are times (in the right area), where I will see download speeds approaching 600-700 Mbps but the average seems to be a lot lower with areas that are not N71 (or in highly congested areas).  I also am noticing a lot of dead-air when making calls from time to time and latency/ping-loss.  They tend to run better in regards to RSRQ/quality (when not congested) but their network is less tolerant during peak times.