Even more disturbing was when I opened the Elixer app. It said my network signal was 59% when the device showed 5 bars!
From what I understand the most reliable measurement of signal strength is dB/dBm. The closer to 0 (zero), the better the signal. The bars can be misleading because bar 5 can have a 40 dBm range while bar 4 may only show a variance of 10 dBm. And even that varies from phone to phone.
On the Inspire go to
Setting/About Phone/Network. It will tell you, in real time what your signal strength is.
Here are my current stats/circumstances for comparative purposes:
(I'm not sure where the closest tower is)
NH
N. Hampton (about 2 miles from coast along I-95)
2nd Floor of commercial building
Signal Strength: -105 dBm to -89 dBm (have yet to see anything under -40 in this area)
Speedtest (Ookla) results at that strength:
Ping: 192 ms
Down: 2786 kbps
Up: 347 kbps (AT&T has obviously NOT activated the HSUPA radio yet).
So maybe you should take a dBm reading under the tower and pair that with your Speedtest comparisons.