The comments below are in response to a blog post (which since has been pulled) about AT&T's recent letter to "valued customers" which has many of us in an uproar over what was said. People are complaining on FB and elsewhere. I used to be a pretty vocal complainer about AT&T due to the terrible coverage and service I got on my iPhone. The poster said they were jumping to Verizon the minute the iPhone is available there. Its been a few years, and I think I've got some perspective now...

• AT&T was totally overwhelmed with the iPhone. Its pretty clear to me they did what they could but had no idea how huge the load would be. They must have done an amazing sales job on Apple to get the deal, but I suspect ANY of the major vendors would have been crushed similarly (or worse). Where they went wrong was not owning up to the breadth of the issues, but I could imagine some very challenging discussions in the board room. They are a publicly traded company, millions of customers, etc. 
• AT&T's marketing constantly writes checks its network can't cash, but they are trying to protect and improve a deeply tarnished image, ironically due to a device that was 100x more successful than anyone imagined. Which has reception problems that Apple won't admit (finally came to light with the iPhone4 antenna). If they had been transparent and honest in social media, many of us would be "working with them" not against them. 
• VZ doesn't have the same network data load that AT&T has. Droids are getting more popular, but we are no where close to # of units sold in US yet. And they run on more than just VZ. Blackberries use far less data. I'm sure people will want to argue here but its just my perspective. 

• The elephant in the room is the iPhone reception - Apple did a shitty job with the original antenna design and the aluminum case was beautiful but not helpful. They went to plastic but didn't invest in redesigning the hardware inside. In the 4 they thought they nailed it but Bumpergate really screwed them. To this day, I know of NO iPhone4 users who complain they cannot hold the phone however they want or that its got worse reception than a 3G/S. Everyone I know says they are an improvement, which supports the point that the antenna was part of the problem. 
• I disagree with those that think every iPhone customer will leave AT&T the minute VZ gets the iPhone. Yes, some will - maybe 20%? We are fundamentally lazy and cheap (human condition) so unless we have enough pain on an ongoing basis, we are not going to cut contracts and re-purchase the same phone again, spending more money just because of past frustrations.

Me - I'm sticking around for the following reasons: 

1. I tried a Droid, and VZ reception sucks at my house just like AT&T. I've already got a MicroCell which actually works OK now and I can use the phone reliably. 
2. No one is investing more in the network, backhaul and tower infra than AT&T. That additional capacity (esp backhaul) will be critical as LTE rolls out and we start streaming video and doing Facetime over 4G.
3. More capacity + less people = better performance. When some people do leave, the combination of the additional headroom and less consumption means the network will be even faster and have more capacity and the towers will be less overloaded. Those that stick around will be on the best phone with the fastest network. 
4. VZ can't do voice and data at the same time. Deal killer for me. Want to be on a con-call and run navigation to find your meeting? Sorry. Want to find and forward that email while on a call? Sorry. Might be ok for non-power users but I found this to be a major issue on the Droid. This should?? get resolved when LTE is rolled out, but not clear if a VZ iPhone will be on that brand-new chipset or still use the EVDO crap. 
5. EVDO data rates are less than 1/2 of AT&T 3G - I have a VZ MiFi, and an AT&T 3G USB card. With the AT&T card I can stream video consistently and smoothly for over 2 hours straight, and the MiFi couldn't even get a stream started. Best you can do with the MiFi is like 250kbps, and I was able to show 1.2Mbps on the AT&T card. 

All in all - I think we've lost sight of the fact that not every network is great in every location. That's why the carriers allow us to try phones for 30 days. I agree that AT&T should not market they are awesome everywhere when they are not, but if another carrier works better somewhere, use them! AT&T has gotten way better in Boulder, and they have 7 new towers going up once they get approval to place and build them (the long straw in the process).  If you live in the mountains and VZ is better there, bitching that AT&T sucks isn't the solution....they can only go so fast when city and county approvals to put up a tower take years, and local residents block the projects. 

I'm not giving AT&T any slack for dropping calls, having overloaded towers, or not being able to handshake a call between tttwo towers reliably. That's BS and unacceptable and we should yell at them for that. However - I don't think billion dollar investments equates to "only lip service" - that would mean they invested zero dollars on the infra and everything on marketing. Clearly not the case, they can prove improvements in a lot of places. 

My $0.10c.