If you didn’t know it already—from your friends’ non-stop complaints and inability to use their cellphones, to, y’know, communicate with you—Consumer Reports has poured it in concrete: AT&T is the worst cellular provider in the United States. But given our nation’s love for the iPhone—a romance that borders on smacked-out dependence—does it even matter?
According to a satisfaction survey of 58,000 ConsumerReports.org readers, AT&T stole the show—in terms of sucking. It was also the only company surveyed to drop significantly in overall satisfaction from last year.
Of those 58,000 angry people who can’t maintain a data connection to save their lives—or make a call to, perhaps, literally save their lives—over half were iPhone owners. AT&T has the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone, though rumors suggest Verizon may be getting its own early next year.
Still: doesn’t matter.
According to CNET:
AT&T said that it activated more than 8 million smartphones, of which about 5.2 million of those devices were iPhones [during the 2010 third quarter]. It was the “the most iPhone activations ever in a quarter,” the carrier said. During the second quarter of 2010, AT&T activated 3.2 million iPhones.
That’s a lot of iPhones—many of which came packaged not only with unrivaled sexiness, but also an internally-known but intentionally-ignored hardware 
Still: doesn’t matter.
Nor should you listen too closely to Consumer Reports. Back in July the mag went apeshit on the iPhone 4 with the splashy article: “Why Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone 4.” Hidden in the text was this little doozy: “[the iPhone 4’s] score in our other tests placed it atop the latest ratings of smart phones that were released today.”
We hate this phone—which just so happens to be the best phone out there!
Looks like Consumer Reports was gunning for press and page views and, despite having legitimate complaints about the iPhone 4, placed a crown atop the smartphone’s noggin and gave its arse an encouraging pat. Good game, kid. Good game.
The moral—or lack thereof—of the story is that our nation’s addiction to the iPhone, which has morphed us into shaky turntables attuned to Apple’s brain-warping marketing machine, renders us impervious to the mounds of incriminating evidence slopped on our plates. We have no intention of dropping our marvels of modern technology (and marketing; don’t forget marketing), no matter how much AT&T sucks.
As much as we want to emote ‘til we’re dead, we know we suffer for fashion (or whatever).