AT&T's network rocks, it's iPhone's problem

This seems like a poorly reasoned article to me.<p>I don't think anybody argues the point that AT&#38;T has the fastest 3G network. You can have the fastest network. It can have slightly more signal bars. It can also be the one that drops calls the most. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Is there even a single other country where the iPhone has the problems it does on AT&#38;T? I've been using my 3G on Rogers here in Canada since it was released. I've never seen a dropped call and Rogers' network is consistently faster than the phone.

Surely, someone has asked people <i>in other countries</i> what their experiences are with their iPhones on their carriers. Given that the rest of the world is on GSM (Korea excluded), we should pretty well know whose fault it is.

I don't know how much AT&#38;T's network "rocks".<p>I have a blackberry bold and most calls get dropped at least once during my conversation (obviously this isn't true for calls that are &#60;2-3 mins).<p>The 3G coverage is also dreadful. The phone will say "3g", but will time out when opening webpages with the blackberry's browser, using google maps, or trying to run the blackberry twitter app.<p>I get absolutely no service at my house. AT&#38;T has been talking about a portable cell station that you can buy, then pay a monthly fee to use (wtf, at&#38;t? You're going to offload traffic to <i>my</i> network connection at home, then charge me for the privilege of it?) for about a year now, but it hasn't materialized (if it has, I haven't seen it).<p>I live in Phoenix, which is a pretty large city. I would understand these things if I lived in a small town, but i don't. AT&#38;T's coverage and their unwillingness to admit that there is a problem and that they are fixing it is unacceptable.

Ahem.<p>"AT&#38;T is a client and Verizon is not, he added."<p>So much for objectivity.

iPhone user for 2 years, in the UK, on O2. Never had a single dropped call or issue.<p>I've been to the US several times, and each time I'm amazed at the unreliable nature of both mobile cellphone networks, <i>and</i> landlines :/ The infrastructure simply isn't there yet.

There are areas where I get great data service when nobody else is around. Then during peak hours data service is very slow or intermittent even though my signal strength stays the same. I'm not a telecom engineer, but it seems like they have too few towers for the number of subscribers in some areas or they don't have enough bandwidth in their backhaul.<p>Maybe both AT&#38;T and the iPhone are bad, at least in my case.<p>When I travel to less populated cities, 3G data is always extremely fast; still I'd rather have a consistent 800 Kbps than 1500 when I'm lucky and 50 when I'm not.

But it's not just iPhone users. Wireless users <i>in general</i> are unhappy with AT&#38;T's service. So if it's not the network, but a problem with the phones, AT&#38;T must have a uniquely awful line-up of hardware. That sounds like just as big a problem for AT&#38;T as network issues.

&#62;He explained that his company’s tests of AT&#38;T’s data network were done with handsets other than the iPhone, which does not allow non-Apple programs like his to run in the background.<p>Wow, that's a huge error.<p>The iPhone doesn't allow non-Apple programs to run in the background either. This is a big issue for app development actually and we've been clamoring for a background task API forever.<p>We get interrupted, and rerun fresh when a call comes in or a person leaves an app for any reason (such as "executing" a URL such as a tel: or twitteriffic:)

Wow. This is so contrary to my own personal experience. I have a droid and a non-iphone at&#38;t phone. The quality of verizon over the at&#38;t one is significant, and the coverage in the chicagoland area is vastly in favor of verizon. If this weren't NYT, I would think there is some astroturfing going on.

Somebody is asleep at the wheel at nytimes. The video that they linked to for "there's a map for that" is <i>awful</i>.<p>Here is a better version: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbYTrYD5y8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbYTrYD5y8</a>

I'm an iPhone user in the Netherlands, locked into T-Mobile. I frequently experience dropped calls. I give T-Mobile the fault... hmmmm

It doesn't matter if there are any shortcomings with the iPhone or not. ATT went into partnership with Apple over this and, if they can't handle what it delivers, they should have discovered this beforehand.