VERIZON WINS J.D. POWER AWARD FOR BEST CALL QUALITY....AGAIN

J.D. Power has just released its latest study on customer satisfaction with wireless carriers. It addresses such things as dropped calls, failures to connect, voice distortion, echoes, static, and late-arriving text messages, and ultimately churns out a rating out of five stars relative to the regional average and other carriers.

In testing done between July and December last year, Verizon had the best or tied for the best satisfaction ratings in five of the six studied areas, while AT&T and Sprint traded blows for second and T-Mobile had to admit defeat as the laggard of the top four.

US Cellular managed to score highest in the North Central region, but J.D. Power's overall assessment isn't very rosy for any of the carriers -- the stats collector says growing smartphone usage, heavy texting and more indoor calls are collectively causing call quality to stagnate, and even warns that "increased adoption of smartphones and wireless tablets may continue to compromise the quality of network service."

CONSUMER REPORTS RANKS AT&T LAST IN MOBILE PROVIDERS

Once again AT&T has found itself dead last in a survey of mobile providers. The latest survey, by Consumer Reports, ranks US Cellular and Verizon Wireless as number one and two respectively, followed by T-Mobile and Sprint, leaving AT&T to bring up the rear.

The survey ranked a number of factors including Value, Texting, Voice, Data, Website and Staff Knowledge. AT&T never even made an average rating any of the items examined, receiving a Worse rating in 8 out of all 9 categories.

AT&T responded with a statement:

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.

Readers were asked to grade each carrier on several criteria including value, voice service quality, data service quality and customer support. The ratings were on a scale of “Worse” to “Better,” with three increments in between. [BGR]