Consumer Reports Ranks AT&T Worst Wireless CarrierConsumer Reports Ranks AT&T Worst Wireless Carrier

Consumer Reports' latest issue looks at carriers in the US as well as the phones they carry. AT&T didn't fare so well.AT&T has taken the brunt of online criticisms about networks. The general consensus is the popularity of the iPhone has overwhelmed the network. Users have been unable to get data connections, dealt with slow speeds, dropped calls and more.

Consumer Reports surveyed 58,000 of their readers to see how they felt about their carriers. They asked about overall value, voice, data and texting services as well as how customer service responded to the phone, on the web or by email. They also ranked the consumer's perception of support's knowledge and whether or not issues were resolved.

Anyone that has ever glanced at a Consumer Reports article knows the red dots are good, empty circles are ok and black dots are the bottom of the barrel.

Let's just say that AT&T has amassed an impressive collection of black disks, except for the Texting category, where they only got half a black disk. Their overall score out of 100 was 60.

T-Mobile was the next to last with a score of 69. They had a mix if half black and empty circles, along with a half-red circle for phone support. That latter score corresponds with what I experienced when I was with T-Mobile - their phone support was pretty good. That score was the best phone support score out of all of the carriers.

Sprint and Verizon were nearly tied for second place and U.S. Wireless received the top score, although there were no marks for their customer service mechanisms.

You can see the chart at Boy Genius Report.

What was AT&T's response? Well, you can be assured that they "take this seriously."

Despite AT&T's response, they haven't been able to talk up customer satisfaction in the past few years. They are going to have to really excel in the future to overcome the negative perception they have built up since 2007.