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Gripe all you want about poor cellular service for the iPhone on AT&T, but the carrier says its wireless networks are improving, especially in New York City.
For other areas of the U.S.—including downtown San Francisco where AT&T has openly acknowledged wireless network problems—performance is also improving, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel told Computerworld. “We are working very hard in San Francisco and are not quite where we want to be yet.”
Siegel cited third-party drive test results by Global Wireless Solutions Inc. that show a dramatic improvement in wireless voice and data performance over the past five years in the New York City area for AT&T as well as Verizon Wireless and other leading carriers.
GWS said voice services were 98 percent to 99 percent reliable in the New York City area in April, while data throughput has jumped from 50Kbit/sec in 2005 to 600Kbit/sec to 700 Kbit/sec in April, and some 3G networks averaging 1 Mbit/sec, an improvement of 20 times from five years earlier. Voice reliability is a measure of both making a connection and retaining it.
Siegel touted the GWS results to point to AT&T’s network performance improvements, even as he criticized a recent user survey from ChangeWave that found 4.5 percent of AT&T users polled reported dropped calls in the prior three months. “No way” are 4.5 percent of AT&T calls dropped, Siegel said, noting that ChangeWave relied on surveys of users instead of actual network tests.
“That ChangeWave survey is qualitative research and seeking opinions,” Siegel said. “GWS is a quantitative study and it actually measures the performance of the networks, not only ours but other carriers in New York City over the last few years.”
Siegel wouldn’t comment directly on the finding by ChangeWave that found 53 percent of Verizon customers said they were very likely or somewhat likely to buy an iPhone should Verizon begin offering it. However, Siegel noted that AT&T had won the right to be the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the U.S. from Apple for good reason. “The facts speak for themselves,” he said. “We’ve offered it exclusively since 2007.”
The iPhone is “just one part of our mobile phone mix even though it represented in the last quarter one-third of all the gross adds [of subscribers] and is important,” Siegel said. “Still, we have a very wide and deep portfolio.”
ChangeWave’s survey of 4,000 users nonetheless put AT&T at the lower end of customer satisfaction, with 23 percent saying they are very satisfied with AT&T’s cellular service, a tie with T-Mobile USA and behind Verizon at 49 percent and Sprint Nextel at 35 percent.
Various consumer groups and analysts have condemned AT&T’s cellular service openly. One of them, Brian Marshall, a financial analyst at BroadPoint AmTech, called AT&T’s service “godawful.” IDC analyst Scott Ellison last fall said ” AT&T has immolated itself with network capacity issues.”
Marshall also said that despite AT&T’s poor network reputation, the company was able to negotiate a six-month extension on its iPhone exclusive contract that many thought would expire this summer. As a result, he and others have said Verizon might have the iPhone in the first quarter of 2011.
Marshall said AT&T offered a cut-rate deal on the data plan for the iPad in exchange for an extension on the iPhone exclusive.
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.