The words grueling and Sprint were used, and this time they weren't used in the context of the wireless company's financial performance.
This time, as a matter of fact, the news was positive.
The No. 3 wireless company came in No. 1 in a "grueling" and "definitive" test of 3G networks operated by AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.
Gadget blog Gizmodo tested the three wireless networks in eight cities around the U.S. Gizmodo testers in the cities used laptops and wireless modems to test download and upload speeds in three- to five-locations around each city.
Sprint offered the fastest download speeds in four of the eight cities - New York, Boston, Seattle and Portland. In some cases, Sprint's download speeds were substantially faster.
The testers also tried out 3G speeds in Austin, Chicago, Raleigh and San Francisco.
"As far as download performance goes, Sprint won overall, beating AT&T five cities to three, and handily beating Verizon in four cities while losing close contests in four more," wrote Wilson Rothman of Gizmodo. "To round it out, Verizon beat AT&T in four cities, tied in one, and lost in three."
AT&T won the less important upload speed test, besting Sprint and Verizon. The two companies basically tied for second.
The results came as a surprise to some in the tech blogging world. Others criticized (sort of) the tests.
ZDNet's Between the Lines blog was among those a bit taken aback by the results.
"But what was surprising was that Sprint - the company that’s been trailing the competition in recent times - consistently had some of the strongest signals across the country," Sam Diaz wrote.
jkOnTheRun, however, noted that it's tough to measure broadband speeds.
"Wireless broadband is a finicky beast," wrote Kevin C. Tofel, the blog's managing editor. "I’ve sat down with my Verizon Wireless EV-DO card and witnessed killer download speeds over 2.3 Megabits per second. Fifteen minutes later in the same exact location, I’ve seen those speeds drop to between 700- and 800 kilobits per second."
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