Many AT&T customers, including the legion of iPhone users out there, may be aware of some wonkiness with their wonder devices of late. Dropped calls, delayed voicemails, inability to access voicemail, inability to tweet their Muni woes, etc. It's been a shitty month or two, and it all comes down to the fact that Apple and AT&T struck that single-carrier deal a couple years back, and AT&T can't handle the data traffic anymore. As the NYT reports today (complete with slide show), AT&T is scrambling to expand their network.

But all you Crackberry and LG Touch users out there, don't feel all high and mighty just yet. The NYT is quick to point out, "Cellphone owners using other carriers may gloat now, but the problems of AT&T and the iPhone portend their future." Apparently New York and San Francisco have it the worst, because this where the highest concentration of iPhone users reside. And as evidenced during South by Southwest this year, the AT&T network completely breaks down when a few thousand iPhone users descend on a smaller urban area like Austin with an inferior telecom grid. This is apparently the reason Apple's been delaying the release of multimedia text messaging -- AT&T can't handle it yet. (Look for MMS to be released, complete with more network slowness, on Sept 25.) This all points to the fact that the iPhone should be available from other carriers just as soon as AT&T's contract expires, possibly in 2010.