AT&T’s nework ranked last in two thirds of US
I’ve blogged before about how horrible the AT&T service on my iPhone is, and how unrepentent they seem to be. Well JD Power has a press release out today, optimistically titled Overall, Wireless Carriers Reduce Dropped Calls, Failed Connections and Static, Driving an Improvement in Call Quality Performance. What’s funny (sad?) is that AT&T isn’t mentioned even once in their press release. I guess they’re heeding the old advice, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” because AT&T ranked DEAD LAST in call quality in the West, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast. They did rank 2nd in the Mid Atlantic and North Central (3-way tie), but that doesn’t help me living in Arizona, or anyone else living anywhere outside of Maryland or Ohio maybe (what is the north central anyway?).
This is not a surprise to me, because this is the reason I’m planning on leaving AT&T as soon as my original iPhone contract expires next month. What is a surprise is that they’re still allowed to advertise as having “More bars in more places.” I think they get away with this by crafting their messages to emphasize that they have better coverage “worldwide.” Which is not really true anyway since they just piggyback on other carriers’ networks, and then charge outrageous rates that range from $0.79/minute in Canada, $0.99/min in Mexico, $1.29/min in most of Europe, all the way up to $2.29/min in Japan, and $2.49/min in the U.A.E., which has the most cell phones per capita of any country in the world. But hey, they just say they have the bars, not that you can afford to use them.
Not that I am a much of a globetrotter, but T-mobile has probably the same international coverage as AT&T (since AT&T likely uses T-mobile’s European network extensively), and their international roaming rates are mostly cheaper as well, $.49 in Canada, $0.99 in europe, $1.49 in Mexico, $1.99 in Japan, $1.99 in UAE.
So my plan is to switch to T-mobile as soon as possible and give the HTC Magic/MyTouch Android device a try. And if I don’t like that, I can always fall back to my trusty 2G iPhone, which is already unlocked for use outside of AT&T’s crappy network.