[gojomo]

Definitely, AT&T's problem in SF has a large congestion-related dimension. I know, because for the first ~2 years of AT&T service, it was annoying but not totally useless in my home neighborhood. But in the last 6 months, it's collapsed. Long periods where call attempts and SMS-sends fail, and where the signal meter oscillates between "no service" and 4 bars -- but even 4 bars may not allow calls and SMSes to succeed.

Congestion means they have lots of paying customers in the area -- so even without congestion pricing, they ought to be able to plan and maintain capacity here. That they have not is evidence of the lack of proper competition, aggravated by Apple's exclusive deal.

[moe]

Living in a civilized country (europe) I can only shake my head whenever I read about the issues the supposed "last remaining Super Power" has with their mobile networks.

Over here we get annoyed when we stumble into an area without HSDPA coverage which makes our data-rate drop from 400 kB/s to around 30 kB/s...

But dropped calls and such are mostly an unknown. I can't remember having ever experienced one except when driving through a tunnel with the car. Our main network (t-mo) is pretty much everywhere until you drive really far out into the woods. Even in rural areas my phone gets to choose between 2-3 networks most of the time. Smaller networks have roaming agreements with t-mo, so phones just seamlessly switch as needed.

You americans have my pity.