- This is the ultimate AT&T speed test video.
I spent over $300 on cell phone plans
and got six iPhone twelves to make this test
as complete and accurate as possible.
I signed up for AT&T Unlimited Elite,
Unlimited Extra, Unlimited Starter and AT&T Unlimited Plus
along with Cricket Unlimited More and Pure Talks $45 plan
to see exactly what the differences are
in speed and performance of these plans on the AT&T Network.
As you know, AT&T's post-paid offerings,
Unlimited Extra and Elite include premium data.
Unlimited Starter does not.
And these plans down here,
the Prepaid options do not as well,
but AT&T Prepaid Unlimited Plus
actually does include premium data.
So what does this mean?
And what are the differences.
In this video, we're gonna find out.
First, all phones have all the apps closed on them.
Let's close that out.
And you can see their battery levels are quite excellent.
Easily over 50%, mostly at a hundred percent here.
This one's at 73, 99, and 97.
All phones are gonna be connected to the exact same server
in the Ookla speed test app.
I'm gonna make this test as fair and accurate as possible.
Let's dive in here and start off with a baseline speed test
as to what these phones get
when they're running a test by themselves.
To get the baseline speeds,
I ran the Ookla speed test app five times
on each of the different plans.
And here were the results
after running those 30 tests.
In first place, we had AT&T Unlimited Starter.
Then we had AT&T Unlimited Elite.
And in third, we had Cricket.
These plans ranged
from about 14 to 17 megabits per second down.
Then we had a surprising drop-off in performance.
AT&T Prepaid and Unlimited Extra
finished in fourth and fifth,
getting between just four and six megabits per second down.
And in last was Pure Talk
with slow speeds of one megabit per second down
and 1.4 megabits per second up.
I would have expected these baseline speeds
to be much closer together.
Let's see it happens when we run this speed test
at the same time.
Will we see these speed differences?
Or will one pull ahead from the other?
We should see the postpaid plans get faster speeds here,
but let's find out.
And while already you can see AT&T Unlimited Starter
was surging ahead, Extra pulled ahead,
Prepaid actually aired out on us.
And well, Pure Talk just got 14.3 down
ahead of all the other plans
even faster than AT&T Unlimited Elite.
So we're already getting
some super interesting results here.
And as these tests finish up, we can see Pure Talk
of all plans went from finishing in last to first.
AT&T Unlimited Extra in second with the speed of 11.9 down.
Starter in third, with a speed of 6.4 four or down.
Elite in forth 3.24, Cricket in last.
And I guess Prepaid didn't even finish.
I'm gonna run this test a few more times,
get the results and show you what the average speeds were.
This is insane.
I don't believe it.
After running the speed test, three more times
across all the plans at the same time,
well, a Pure Talk finished in first place
with the fastest speeds.
It averaged 21.3 down and 2.4 up.
In second place, we had Cricket
which got 19.5 down in 0.2 up.
Then in third place, we finally had AT&T Unlimited Elite
getting 8.3 down and 2.4 up.
But what we're seeing here is such a drastic difference
that honestly, I think my apartment
is just in a bad coverage area.
What can we do?
Let's go to a new location with way better AT&T speeds
and see what the true differences are between these plans.
Okay, you guys, aren't gonna believe this.
I literally moved the entire setup, camera, tripod, desk
and phones and everything out to a new location.
We are at what's called McIntosh Lake
here in Longmont, Colorado getting way better AT&T speeds.
So let's dive into it.
Let's start off by getting a new baseline speed test.
I'm gonna open up the Ookla speed test application
as before, run five speed tests on each plan
and jump to the results.
Speeds were much better here.
And the averages were closer together too.
They ranged from 126 megabits per second down on Cricket
to 155 megabits per second down on AT&T Prepaid.
And peak download speeds
were also pretty close together as well.
They ranged from 157 on Cricket
up to 195 on AT&T Prepaid.
And were pretty close together across the board.
These plans were so consistent
because when the AT&T network isn't busy,
AKA, when there is no congestion,
it doesn't matter what plan you have.
You'll get fast speeds across the board
because, well, AT&T has a fast network.
but that said there was one outlier, Pure Talk.
Pure Talk not only had a rough start
by getting an absurdly high ping of 857 milliseconds
and a jitter of 2,600 milliseconds on the very first test,
but it also aired out on a couple of tests.
And finally, when it did connect properly,
I learned something fascinating.
Pure Talk has a 75 megabit per second speed cap
on their plants.
Check this out.
We know the max speed is well over 100
and we can see Pure Talk briefly surge up to 127
but then it comes right back down
to around the 70 to 75 megabit per second mark.
I also observed red pocket on AT&T
had the exact same 75 megabit per second speed cap
which makes me wonder, is this on all AT&T MVNOs?
I'm not sure.
But how does Pure Talk compare
when we run these speed tests simultaneously?
Surely couldn't be a plot twist in here.
Right, well, let's find out.
On the first test AT&T Elite jumps ahead
to about 75 megabits per second down.
Meanwhile, AT&T Prepaid and Extra
are pretty much side by side,
getting 47 down in 42 down respectively.
And that leaves Cricket and Unlimited Starter.
The two deprioritized plans here
in last place getting 22 to 32 megabits per second down.
And Pure Talk.
You, are you okay over there, bud?
Okay, you're okay.
You can do it.
Oh no, you can not do it, okay.
As these tests finish up here,
there's one thing I wanna point out.
There's a pretty huge discrepancy
between the speeds we saw while the tests were going on
and what the final results show.
I mean, just look at the difference.
Why is this?
If we look back at the footage,
this is because some speed tests finish earlier than others.
When one test is done,
it frees up congestion on the network.
So the other plans that are still running get Extra capacity
and a surge in performance, right at the end.
And since Ookla records the ending speed of the test
as the final result, this behavior
actually skews the results higher than they should be.
So instead of looking at average results,
let's instead look at what the plans were getting
when they were running side by side.
This is test number two.
And what's weird is as we pause this test,
you can see that Elite is actually to...
Oh no, it's tied with Pure Talk.
Oh my gosh, Pure Talk.
But they are getting exactly the same speeds,
51 megabits per second down.
Then it's a three-way tie between Cricket,
AT&T Prepaid and AT&T Unlimited Extra.
This is perplexing to me because Cricket is deprioritized.
So it should be getting the same speeds
as all Unlimited Starter like it did in the previous test
but here it's hanging with the prioritized plans.
And lastly, we do have Starter
getting a slower 12.8 megabits per second down.
The upload speeds were also a little confusing to me.
Elite is in first place, which makes sense.
But in second place we have Cricket and AT&T Prepaid.
And then we have Extra and Starter tied for third
with Pure Talk, kicking it in last.
Onto test three,
and here we see the performance I would have expected.
Elite is comfortably in first
getting 70 megabits per second down.
Extra and AT&T Prepaid are tied in second,
getting about 40 to 45 megabits per second down.
Starter and Cricket are tied in third place,
getting 23 megabits per second.
And of course we Pure Talk doing Pure Talk things.
This is probably the clearest indication
of the three priority levels on AT&T that we've seen so far.
Elite has priority one.
Extra and Prepaid have priority two.
And finally Starter and Cricket have priority three.
But this isn't a fair test
because the bandwidth is being split between two devices
on priority levels two and three.
We still don't have an exact idea
of what the true speed differences are.
So how do we find out?
Well, let's simply run a speed test
comparing the three AT&T post-paid plans together.
Elite versus Extra versus Starter to see exactly
how their priority levels compare
and impact their data speeds.
Let's pause this test and measure the differences.
If we say Elite is getting 100% speed
at 79 megabits per second,
then Extra is getting about 55% speed
and Starter is around 20% speed.
On the upload side of things, Extra is at 67% speed
while Starter is at 57% speed.
Running the test again, and this time Extra gets 64%
while Starter gets 35% speed on the download.
A 10% increase for both plans.
And for the upload, it's a little weird.
Extra actually ties with Elite,
and Starter is in last.
I'm not sure what to call this one.
So let's move on to the final test
and then draw some conclusion.
For the final test, the numbers could not be more perfect.
I mean, look at this.
Elite hit just over 100 megabits per second down,
which means Extra is getting about 75% speed
and Starter is getting about 25% speed.
And on the upload,
there continues to be a clear difference between the plans
but the numbers aren't quite as nice.
Extra is at 82% speed here while Starter is about 50% speed.
So what can we say about AT&T's priority levels?
Well, it's pretty clear there are three distinct levels.
Priority 1 contains AT&T Unlimited Elite
and it operates at 100% speed.
Priority 2 contains AT&T Unlimited Extra
and AT&T Prepaid Unlimited Plus
and it operates at 65% speed plus or minus about 10%.
And priority three contains AT&T Unlimited Starter,
AT&T Prepaid Unlimited, Cricket Unlimited More
and other deprioritized plans.
And they operate at about 25% speed, plus or minus 5%.
And that just leaves Pure Talk and Red Pocket.
Where do they fit in?
Well, technically they actually belong in Priority 2,
but with a 75 megabit per second speed cap, as we observed.
Why is this?
Well, it turns out we can actually measure priority level
using something called a QCI value
or Quality of Service Class Identifier.
Using Network Signal Guru on a routed Pixel 3A,
we can actually measure and record these priority levels
and they match up perfectly with the speeds we observed.
These values range from six to nine,
six being the highest and nine being the lowest.
And when we measure the priority levels,
AT&T Unlimited Elite comes in first,
with a QCI value of seven.
Unlimited Extra, AT&T Prepaid Unlimited Plus,
along with Pure Talk and Red Pocket,
all end up with QCI eight,
putting them in priority level two.
And lastly we have AT&T Unlimited Starter
along with Cricket Unlimited More, both getting QCI nine,
putting them at the bottom of the pack.
So surprisingly, despite having
a 75 megabit per second speed cap
actually do get the same priority level
as the postpaid Unlimited Extra plan.
This is great news for Prepaid customers
because you're not likely
to be impacted by network congestion.
Instead, you're more likely to hit
these 75 megabit per second speed cap,
which limits your performance
but that is still plenty fast
for everything you could need your smartphone for.
So hopefully this gives you a better idea
of the different priority levels and performance
on the AT&T network
when it comes to the postpaid plans with priority data
as well as the deprioritized plans,
both from an observational standpoint,
and from a technical perspective.
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I'm Stetson.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.