AT&T worst US carrier claims Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports has ranked AT&T as worst carrier in the US, with value, voice and data performance, and customer service all scoring "worse" ratings. Only AT&T's texting performance managed to scrape above the lowest possible score, leaving AT&T well behind US Cellular, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Unsurprisingly, AT&T isn't taking the news lying down; while the carrier says it takes Consumer Reports' figures "seriously", it also pulls out stats of its own about mobile broadband speed, dropped-call rates and more:

"We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation's fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide.  And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent – the equivalent of just one call in a thousand – of the industry leader." AT&T statement

Meanwhile, the report also ranks the top smartphones according to carrier, and it's a strong showing for Android and for Samsung across the board. The iPhone 4 tied for first place with the Samsung Captivate on AT&T, while the Motorola DROID X and Samsung Fascinate tied at Verizon. On Sprint, the Epic 4G took top spot, while Samsung's Vibrant was top of the pile at T-Mobile. Samsung recently announced that it had clinched the number one sales position for Android devices in the US in the last quarter.

[via Chron]