U.S. Cellular tops Consumer Reports survey, AT&T Mobility in last place

AT&T Mobility took last place in Consumer Reports’ annual survey of wireless service providers. The carrier has worked extensively to try to better its networks amid claims that its traffic has increased 5,000% in three years. Nevertheless, the No. 2 carrier received “worse” scores across all categories except texting, where it received a next-to-last-place score.
Regional provider U.S. Cellular Corp. scored first place with a high score of 84; followed by Verizon Wireless, which received a 74 score; just ahead of Sprint Nextel Corp., which scored 73. T-Mobile USA Inc. got a score of 69, followed by AT&T’s score of 60. Since Consumer Reports said scores of fewer than 4 points are meaningful, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mo are all fairly close.
U.S. Cellular Corp. this fall unveiled a number of new customers initiatives designed to retain and attract mobile customers increasingly dissatisfied with current carrier methods. The operator in October introduced “The Belief Project,” that included new rate plans, contract terms and a points system that customers can use to further enhance the offering. The plans are all contract-based, leaving aside the increasingly competitive no-contract segment that has introduced increased volatility in customer churn numbers across the industry. U.S. Cellular scored “better” in the categories of value, voice, staff knowledge and issue resolved categories. It was the only operator to score any “betters.”
For its part, AT&T recently said that its mobile data traffic has grown from about 1 billion megabytes during the third quarter of 2007 to about 30.3 billion megabytes in the third quarter of this year.