The Business Times reports today that AT&T is pleased with themselves and "proud of the network [they] have built", as they continue to beef up their data network in San Francisco -- which is ground zero for network failures, dropped calls, and dead zones in the world of the iPhone. This follows on an earlier report about all the money AT&T says they're investing to upgrade their local networks, but still doesn't clarify where, exactly, the money's being spent, or how much improvement iPhone users can expect by "the end of the year," when said upgrades are supposed to be complete.

The SFBT has done us the solid of creating an AT&T dead zone map for the Bay Area, but as you can see, San Francisco proper is just one big jumble of dead zones. What we want to know is what happened to the rumors that Apple was going to finally break free of the exclusive contract with AT&T this year?

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