Survey: AT&T Drops Three Times as Many Calls as Verizon

After a brief respite, AT&T is back in the news again for claims of poor wireless service. Despite a concerted effort to improve connection reliability and circuit capacity, the carrier is still receiving low marks for dropped-call frequency, a key indicator of wireless customer satisfaction.

Indeed, in a March survey of 4,040 smartphone subscribers by ChangeWave Research, AT&T (T) subscribers reported the highest percentage of dropped calls by any U.S. carrier–4.5 percent. That’s significantly worse than T-Mobile (2.8 percent) and Sprint (S) (2.5 percent), and three times as bad as the 1.5 percent reported by subscribers of archrival Verizon (click on tables below to enlarge).

“AT&T was clearly the worst in the March survey, tacking on yet another increase over the last ChangeWave research survey,” ChangeWave observed. “Furthermore, a closer look at the trends show an increasing number of dropped calls among AT&T customers surveyed, and a steadily decreasing number of dropped calls for Verizon customers.”

And AT&T suffers for this. Just 23 percent of the AT&T customers ChangeWave surveyed said they are “very satisfied” with the company’s service. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Verizon (VZ) customers described themselves as “very satisfied.” A tough break for AT&T, which has been doing its damndest to improve the public’s perception of its network as one overtaxed by the data demands of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

That said, it’s important to note that ChangeWave’s research does contrast to a Feburary PC World study that ranked AT&T’s 3G network as the top performer in the 13 markets it surveyed.