• Fortune, Wednesday, May 5, 2010 1:41 PM

In January, AT&T quieted critics of its coverage quality by announcing plans to spend $2 billion on improvements throughout the year. Yet, according to a new customer survey conducted by ChangeWave Research, the quality of AT&T's service has actually worsened. In a poll that asked 4,040 smartphone users in March how many dropped calls they had experienced in the past three months, AT&T came in dead last.

Verizon customers reported losing only 1.5% of their calls over the past three months -- the lowest in the smartphone industry and the lowest percentage for a carrier ever recorded by ChangeWave. AT&T customers, meanwhile, reported 4.5% of calls dropped in the last three months. That equals one out of every 22 calls -- three times as many as Verizon's and the worst percentage ChangeWave has ever seen. Notes Fortune: "This is not good news for AT&T or for Apple, which has cited AT&T's plans for improving its network as the reason it is sticking with the carrier -- at least for now."

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