Verizon's LTE Advanced - Where's the Beef?

We were impressed with Verizon's announcement on August 29th about their launch of LTE Advanced in 461 markets across the country. Verizon claims its customers can get up to 50% faster speeds with LTE Advanced, so we ran a few tests in Chico, which is one of the 17 California markets included in the launch. Based on the few comparison tests between the Samsung Galaxy S6, which is included in Verizon Wireless' list of supported devices, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0, which is not, the results seemed to be tied. It turns out there are several variants of the Samsung Galaxy S6, and I suspect the model we have does not support LTE Advanced.

Summary of results:

Here's the of California markets where Verizon claims to have launched LTE Advanced. More to come on this topic as we figure out if there really is a boost with LTE Advanced....

1. Bakersfield
2. Chico-Oroville
3. El Centro-Calexio
4. Eureka
5. Fresno
6. Los Angeles
7. Merced
8. Modesto
9. Redding
10. Sacramento
11. Salinas-Monterey
12. San Diego
13. San Fran.-Oak.-S.J.
14. San Luis Obispo
15. Stockton
16. Visalia-Porterville
17. Yuba City-Marysville