The AT&T hate is strong these days, especially following the carrier’s inability to deliver two of the most highly anticipated features to the single largest iPhone market in the world. But now even I am beginning to hate AT&T, and I still unfortunately have 16 more months to deal with these folks.

I’ve been hearing a lot of reports from people about network quality issues. I never experienced them, and I guessed it had something to do with the fact that I live in a relatively small market.

That’s no longer the case. In the past few weeks, I am noticing increasingly degraded service. I watch as my phone signal flails around, losing data connectivity or becomes so sluggish its unusable. Call drops have also become increasingly numerous — before late May I may have dropped one or two calls in six months.

I’m also having problems where people are calling me and the calls are going directly to voicemail, even if I have service. The only way I know somebody was trying to reach me is a seemingly phantom voicemail notification.

So my question for our rural readers: are you seeing these problems creep into your neighborhoods? I’m quite curious.

AT&T is apparently being brought to its knees by the iPhone, and can’t keep up. It is also becoming the single strongest argument to end the company’s exclusive grip on the device. Problems like this are not the Apple way.

Looking across the Web, its becoming clear that consumers ire for AT&T is now being transferred to Apple. While this may not necessarily be fair, it was bound to happen. It is now the company’s responsibility to demand results from the carrier or move on.

I am actually hoping that T-Mobile makes a move to get the device. Personally, I think that carrier would have been a better fit for Apple if it would have had a decent network: AT&T was more a marriage of convenience and necessity.

Apple, please listen. It’s time to move on.

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