I mean, I hate AT&T - but not because of it's network. In its defense, its 3G network has always been reliable and fast. I've had 2 3G devices before this one, (HTC Wizard/8525 and HTC Kaiser/Tilt), and even with HTC's 'questionable' quality - I was still able to get DSL speeds, consistently.
O, and I had it since January 2007, so I think I know what I'm talking about.
Ok, so since you deal with telecom so often, I'm sure the immense of amount of noobs with iPhone 3G's taxing the network doesn't play a part right?
Bottom line, AT&T 3G was great, then it sucked when the iPhone came out. Mmm. I wonder where the issue lies. Sure, AT&T may have grossly underestimated the demands - but bottom line is, AT&T's 3G network, at least when its working - is just as good if not better than their competitors.
i do the telecom dance on a daily basis. i am more of land based type of guy and don't much with wireless, but i get the basic concepts.
here is an easy way to explain it:
what we know -
1. a metric crapton of people bought the new 3G iphone
2. the 3G iphone is essentially mini computer, therefore it is downloading full webpages, multimedia content (pandora radio) etc. etc. so the amount of data being requested / sent had gone up a bunch as well
3. the new 2.0 software also came out, so on top of the 3G kids, you have people on EDGE hitting up the network as well
So to make this less technical think of it this way:
You have a wireless router at home connected to a cable modem that gets 1.5 meg up / 1.5 meg down (this is an example anal retentive people).
You open up your laptop and speed along...doing what you do on the internet etc. etc.
Now for the sake of this example lets say 100 people are connected to your wireless router at home and start going to town on the internet. Obviously your performance would suck. Everyone is connected, has full signal strength and what not, but everyone is sharing the same cable modem connection to the internet... therefore everything is slower than molasses.
While this isn't the *BEST* example, it is similar to the problems in NY (at least thats what my experience tells me).
In Manhattan there are the 3G/Edge Towers..those towers go to closets in which most likely Point to Point DS1,DS3 circuits then go back to whats called a POP (point of presence)...the POP is then connected to ATT's network which gets you out on the internet..etc etc. They may might be connected to some type of fiber ring..who knows (that gets into some high level crap that I don't know how it works)...so while you may get 4-5 bars and crap up/down speed..its because the ways your data gets back to ATT are bogged down.
Hopefully you were able to follow me there.