2009 was of course jam packed with people complaining about the performance of the iPhone on AT&T's network -- at least in congested markets like New York and The Bay Area. After taking a serious beating in the press, AT&T quickly got to work adding more backhaul and cell sites, converting their markets to 850Mhz, and according to a new report from Wall Street Journal this week, working more closely with Apple on ways to make the iPhone a little more efficient in terms of network use. According to the website, Apple engineers got a "crash course" from AT&T in networking:The Journal got a lot of attention for this article yesterday, namely because it rekindled the rather obvious rumor -- for what really is about the fifty-seventh time -- that the iPhone should eventually make the leap to Verizon. AT&T has one of the lowest customer defection (churn) rates in the industry, and while AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spent 2009 pretending this was because of the AT&T network -- it was because of the cult of Apple. Should AT&T lose iPhone exclusivity, the AT&T network will of course be put to direct comparison with Verizon in terms of iPhone performance, so AT&T is apparently scrambling.

AT&T tells Broadband Reports that so far their efforts have involved adding 1,900 new cell sites, installing more than 100,000 new backhaul connections (that's four times the number installed in 2008), doubling the number of towers served by fiber (as opposed to T1), pushing overall coverage out further to serve 360 markets, or roughly 75 percent of the population, and deployed HSPA 7.2 software at all of the company's 3G (though not EDGE) towers.

"While this upgrade is not expected to provide a noticeable immediate boost in average speeds until backhaul is in place, it does result in a better overall customer experience by generally improving consistency in accessing data sessions," AT&T's Seth Bloom says about the 7.2 HSPA software upgrade. "It also prepares the network for faster speeds and increases network efficiency." You of course need a 7.2 HSPA-capable phone to take full advantage of those speeds.

So far it appears that the efforts are paying dividends. Tests earlier this year by PC World show a marked improvement in iPhone performance, though other studies from JD Power and Associates indicate the company still lags in terms of call quality. While anecdotal of course, the number of dropped iPhone calls we've experienced in the NYC area has dropped considerably. It's pretty clear AT&T is listening.