At&T network ranked worst by J.D. Powers

- Published on 08-29-2011 05:40 PM

7 Comments

Wondering why AT&T is hustling to get that 4G LTE network up and running ahead of schedule? AT&T has been ranked worst among the four major wireless carriers in the U.S. according to the J.D. Power and Associates U.S. 2011 Wireless Network Quality Performance Study. The major nationwide study tested overall network performance for the four major U.S. cell phone service providers as well as top regional carriers from around the country. Among the big four — Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile — Verizon Wireless found itself atop the list in each of the six regions where J.D. Power performed its tests. On the other end of the spectrum, AT&T was either last or tied at the bottom in five out of the six regions. Read on for more.
In the North Central, Southeast and Southwest regions, AT&T tied for last place with Sprint. In the Mid-Atlantic region, AT&T sat in a three-way tie behind Verizon Wireless, and AT&T was alone at the bottom in the Northeast region. In the Southwest, the only region where AT&T was not found to be at the bottom, the carrier tied Sprint for second-best performance while Verizon sat at the top and T-Mobile was ranked worst. “Based on the varying degree of consistency with overall network performance, it’s critical that wireless carriers continue to invest in improving both the voice quality and data connection-related issues that customers continue to experience,” said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates. J.D. Power ranked network performance in 10 key areas for this study: dropped calls; calls not connected; audio issues; failed/late voicemails; lost calls; text transmission failures; late text message notifications; Web connection errors; email connection errors; and slow downloads.
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source. BGR

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Tags: 2011, at&t, jd power, rankings, ratings, us carriers

7 Comments

chokem - 08-29-2011

Kind of surprising, but I believe JD Powers. They are a pretty reliable source.

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ventz - 08-29-2011

Finally someone acknowledges it!!

ATT has the worst network in populated places. In Boston/Cambridge, between 8am and 7-8pm, you have 5 bars of 3G and get ~200KBs on 3G -- if that.

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PapaMag - 08-29-2011

Oh but they said they are the king

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raton - 08-29-2011

I smell mob payout

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jfcooley - 08-30-2011

I've not had any of the problems with sprint that I had with at&t.

Unless there's an earthquake

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dushdavj - 08-30-2011

This is odd, I found the worst for dropped calls or lack coverage (go into a building lose signal) was T-Mobile, although they provided the best customer service. I have also seen that ATT provides faster data than Verizon, plus can be used worldwide, (again a negative for CDMA) however I am really upset with their penny pinching tactics with bridging on the Playbook!! Having said that this is not the issue in the article, it is more about network speed which I find strange. Is it more because the IPhone was on ATT and slow data seen on the IPhone upset a lot of people since they use data for more creating bottlenecks in large cities? Verizon is just beginning to see this. Then you ask how much of the problems, dropped calls etc are due to the network and how much are due to Antenna issues (don't want to blame the phone, blame the network?). Finally how many dropped calls are caused to the phone not handling the issue that a message (data) will come in during a phone call, since ATT has the multi task capability.

I would say it is easy to perform a survey and questions asked can often taint the survey (just look at the multi surveys coming out at the moment about the forthcoming elections ), but it is not easy to actually identify the true reason for the problem, so instead it is put on the head of the carrier. Statistics can show correlation through totally unrelated facts just depends who is manipulating them.

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