For the first 18 months I’ve owned an iPhone, I’ve been able to see past the shortcomings of the service, but I’ve had a change of heart towards the lacking service.  Changing expectations, history with a more reliable provider/phone, and a few specific incidents where service quality (dropped calls, missed calls) has had an acute, detrimental impact on my work or personal life.

Now that I’ve made the mental leap to make a change, it’s time to evaluate the options:

1. Get AT&T to fix the service
2. Jailbreak the phone and swicth to T-Mobile (the only other GSM provider in the states)
3. Buy a Palm Pre, Android, or HTC phone

After a stop at the local AT&T store, the manager helpfully submitted an on premise service request – apparently they will actually check my home address and make make adjustments to the tower.  She literally said they might ‘turn the antenna’.  Needless to say, I’m not optimistic that will resolve the issue.  She also confirmed that the Santa Monica area does suffer from ‘capacity problems’, and that AT&T is in the process of adding capacity in the area.  Promising, but who knows how long that will take.

Next up, I acquired a first generation iPhone to test a jailbreak and a T-Mobile SIM.  Fortunately, the phone was already jailbroken, so after a few updates, I dropped in a T-Mobile SIM, and the phone was running.

The ability to compare an AT&T iPhone and a T-Mobile iPhone side-by-side was eye opening.  I’ve heard lot’s of speculation that the iPhone was at fault for service problems – different provisioning of towers for iPhone users, a weaker radio, lot sof reasons, but nothing I could confirm.

This test was in no way scientific, but here’s what I observed:

• Visible difference in the number of bars on the phones.  In most areas of my Santa Monica residence, the T-Mobile phone show more bars.
• Several areas where there is no reception for AT&T, but a few bars for T-Mobile.

I made several test calls – simultaneously calling both phones via Skype – as a conference call.  In 4/6 tests, both phones rang. In 2/6 tests, the AT&T phone never rang and the calls went straight to voicemail.

Disappointing results by AT&T to be sure.  At this point, I plan to give AT&T a few days to attempt to resolve the issues, then on to figure out which direction to take.