We've all seen the knock-down-drag-out advertising battle between Verizon and AT&T in the last few weeks with Verizon claiming a far superior 3G coverage map while AT&T fired back with a faster 3G network. Investment banking firm Piper Jaffray decided to put the speed claims to the test. Armed with an iPhone and the Verizon Droid, they set off in New York to see who was the speed king.VentureBeat has the report. The ultimate result is, AT&T is right. Their network is usually faster, and measurably so. In two thirds of the tests the iPhone left the "racing horse duct-taped to a SCUD missile" choking on AT&T dust.

One of the test locations was on Wall Street. The iPhone averaged a throughput of 899 kilobits per second while the Droid averaged 309 kpbs. If you are a broker that needs to ensure a speedy wireless network connection to execute a trade while off of the trading floor, AT&T is the network for you. At Grand Central Station the story was similar, with the iPhone hitting 981 kpbs and the Droid averaging 605 kpbs.

The tables were turned in Times Square. In five tests, the iPhone failed to complete two of the rounds due to connectivity issues, and when it did, it came in at speeds that would only make a GPRS user envious - 89kbps. The Droid averaged 703kbps. Looks like AT&T has some network issues to work on in that location.

I wonder if AT&T will make an ad that rightly makes fun of the SCUD missile speed? After all, as missiles go, it could benefit by being duct-taped to a race horse.