Report: T-Mobile ranks best in data test during Super Bowl

Root Wireless, a company that offers a performance-mapping service of cell phone carriers, took the opportunity to test the wireless data performance of all four nationwide carriers at Sun Life Stadium during Sunday's big game. The results, according to Root Wireless, seem to show that T-Mobile came out on top, while Verizon came out at the bottom of the pack.

T-Mobile saw the fewest connection failures (3 percent), while Sprint came in close behind (9 percent). Both carriers had data speeds on par with their everyday service levels--T-Mobile's was 237Kbps down/126Kbps up, while Sprint's was 231Kbps down/68Kbps up.

AT&T had the highest rate of data connection failures (16 percent), but it also provided the fastest download speeds (348Kbps down/68Kbps up), so it maintains the third-place ranking. In fact, according to Root Wireless, this is quite the improvement over AT&T's performance during CES. However, Verizon didn't do well on both counts. According to the report, Verizon had 11 percent of connection attempts fail and the slowest data speeds of all (97Kbps down/58Kbps up). It's so bad that Root Wireless reports that it has never seen Verizon score so poorly in its tests.

These performance results are even more interesting after all four nationwide carriers have promised to boost their networks during the game.

The test was done via a proprietary Root Wireless application that ran continuously on four different phones from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on February 7 in Sun Life Stadium in Miami.