While AT&T certainly does offer quality service in some markets (something users in Boise often like to remind us), there's simply no debating that when it comes to service quality studies they've been a basement dweller for several years. It doesn't really matter if you're looking at surveys from the ACSI, JD Power and Associates or Consumer Reports -- there AT&T sits at the last place spot in terms of customer satisfaction.
It's a position they've earned, according to consumer advocates, because they've consistently put executive compensation and investor returns a little too high on the priority list (below you and, oh, running a working network).
That's why it's rather interesting to see CNN running a story claiming that AT&T's network is magically all better now -- it's just that nobody has noticed. CNN's basis for this claim? AT&T itself. They also make the claim based on "industry experts" (plural) -- by which they mean one firm giving one award largely unrelated to how well AT&T's network or support reps actually perform:
...the mediocre perception of AT&T's network quality lags behind the much-improved reality, according to wireless industry experts. Frost & Sullivan, an influential telecommunications industry analysis firm, awarded AT&T its 2011 strategy award for the North American mobile network market, praising the company for its dual-network improvement strategy.
If you don't follow the sector, Frost and Sullivan doles out an award to AT&T for something or other nearly every weekend, and in this case the award was simply for a migration strategy -- running HSPA+ alongside LTE. The award had absolutely nothing to do with customer satisfaction, network performance, or service and support. While it's possible that AT&T's network is improving in traditional AT&T trouble markets (New York City, San Francisco), the studies don't yet reflect any significant movement by AT&T -- making CNN's case that AT&T is secretly now really fantastic a little hard to make.Yet CNN takes things one step further in an article that reads like an AT&T press release. Despite lagging Verizon in LTE deployment (200 markets for Verizon to just 26 for AT&T), CNN goes on to insist that AT&T is "better positioned for the long haul than any of its rivals." Ignoring for a moment that AT&T works very hard to ensure they don't have any rivals, we'd guess Verizon might have something to say about positioning, given they not only come in first place in all of the studies CNN ignored while giving AT&T a back rub, they also have a year head start on LTE deployment.
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