Iphone and at&t - the truth about at&t service for the iphone

Question

i love my iphone.
the only problem has been using at&t in southern california. in los angeles there are major holes in the service, and multiple hour delays on delivery of voicemails and emails. so ive been on the phone with technical and customer support dealing with this for months.
Well, yesterday I was on the at&t support line for about an hour with this nice girl that gave my account a credit and finally told me what's really going on and why at&t service and coverage actually ***** so bad.
here's the scoop straight from their mouths to your eyes:
-when at&t bought cingular they ended up having too many cell towers for monopoly rules, so they had to sell a whole bunch and then lease back the service capacity that their network here needed.
-they've gotten cheap and over the past 9 months have not been leasing the entire network capacity as needed.
-this means dropped calls for you and me, network busy, call failed, no edge connection, and voicemail and email delivery hours or even days late.
-i asked if there was any remedy in the works, and she told me that they have a plan to build more towers but that it was stalled in the bureaucracy. she said the more complaints they got from customers the sooner these towers will be built.
-i asked if they were doing anything for their customers and she told me that they would let people out of their contracts early without a penalty because of these issues!
so, finally i get to the question, how's t-mobile service in southern california? los angeles?
i also want to get a discussion of service going in general. i know network issues are not apple's fault, but they affect the iphone experience and are going to affect the iphone bottom line eventually as more and more customers grow tired of at&t's business antics. apple does have a responsibility to its customers to be working with at&t to resolve service issues so that i can continue to love my iphone (i sleep with it).

Answer 1

adrock00,
Have you been spying on my wife and me?? You are writing, verbatum, our experiences with the iPhone. Same thing - love the iPhone, HATE the AT&T service. It's shameful. I spend a good deal of money a month (paying for two iPhones), and I can not, I swear to you, remember the last time I had a conversation on it without the line being dropped (going through this procedure 3-4 times to complete the call) or completely mangled and incomprehensive for periods of time. Love the 'i' in the iPhone, but hate the "phone" Feel like a fool, really, and stuck. In this land of choices, and quality assurances, shouldn't one be allowed to switch service if the service you signed up for is inadequate. With these contracts, they have you by the cojones and laugh all the way to the bank. Shame.
Fully agree with you, also, that although Apple has provided an exceptional product, that I can not tell enough great things about, it should carry some of the responsibility for forcing us to use the lousy service provided by AT&T.
Just my experience. I'm also in LA, BTW.
Cheers