I thought I would follow up on the blog I posted earlier this week about AT&T suing Verizon over Verizon’s commercials depicting the weakness of AT&T’s 3G mobile coverage. Since I posted the blog, AT&T and Verizon were heard in an Atlanta courtroom and the judge ruled against AT&T in their immediate pursuit to get an injunction for Verizon to stop playing their commercials where AT&T is mentioned. The federal court judge set a court date for mid December to further hear arguments.

Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal wrote a blog about the judge’s decision regarding the AT&T Verizon lawsuit. It is actually free to read which is amazing since Rupert Murdoch is starting to charge to read news content; but that is another story and another future blog worth writing about.

As I stated in my previous AT&T Verizon blog, I have AT&T and have chosen that carrier for our entire company based on the fact they have the iPhone. This past week I attended a conference in Sonoma California. My plane landed in Oakland, a fairly large city across the bay from San Francisco. Upon arriving my AT&T phone(s) (as I carry an iPhone and a BlackBerry) dropped 6 calls within 30 minutes. Throughout my stay in California AT&T phone coverage was spotty at best, and the last day in downtown San Francisco was more of the same, dropped calls. Even today as I write this from my house in Las Vegas, both my cell phones won’t pick up the AT&T 3G network.

Inspired by the blog I wrote, I decided to take an informal survey of everyone who I came across during my trip to California who had AT&T mobile service. It was easy to spot the iPhone users who I knew had AT&T. Starting at the conference I attended, I approached 2 colleagues with the iPhone and asked a simple question, if Verizon had the iPhone, would you switch from AT&T? In addition to these colleagues I asked 17 strangers in the airport and on the streets of San Francisco the same question.

The result – 18 of the 19 people said if Verizon had access to the iPhone they would switch today and in fact most of them said they have considered dumping the iPhone just because of AT&T’s mobile coverage problem. The one person that said they wouldn’t switch admitted that they didn’t travel for work and that the phone in their immediate area worked fine. I am sure that AT&T knows this fact and is one reason they are suing Verizon and desperately trying to keep the iPhone exclusive to AT&T.

As I said before, AT&T should spend their money and time improving their coverage and 3G network and less time worrying about others. They wouldn’t have to worry if they did their job. After all, it is a pain to switch carriers, so AT&T has a huge loyal market if they would only listen to their customers before it is too late.