While AT&T's LTE network is actually clocking in with faster speeds that Verizon's in early deployment markets, users in some markets like Chicago are seeing notably slower speeds. Why? As Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM notes, AT&T has only 10 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum in play in Chicago while it has 20 MHz in most markets. That means slower speeds in what's becoming a heated LTE marketing fight with Verizon, and it could prove to be a particular marketing problem when the LTE iPhone emerges. A quick look at what has been deployed hints that Chicago isn't alone:However, this is more of an engineering and marketing problem than it is a spectrum shortage problem. AT&T hasn't even touched their AWS spectrum yet, and are among the worst cell carriers when it comes to using the spectrum they do have efficiently, being painfully slow at freeing up spectrum currently being used for legacy 2G (EDGE) services. It won't be long before AT&T blames their own engineering sluggishness on the blocked T-Mobile deal. They just got done blaming AT&T prices hikes on the blocked acquisition, while in the same breath stating those hikes would have come anyway.

One also needs to define "slow" here; actual users in markets like Chicago say they still see speeds in excess of 20 Mbps sometimes, so it's not quite something to cry about just yet. Average speeds for many of these users continues to be somewhere around 6 Mbps -- plenty for largely anything you'd like to accomplish on a smartphone (at $10 per additional gigabyte).