8 months after performing dismally in nationwide testing of the major US 3G networks by PC World and Novarum, Inc, AT&T Wireless has seemingly made true on its promise to upgrade its network to better compete with other major wireless carriers. In fact, according to PC World’s latest study, AT&T blew right past them.

In the study, which comprised 51,000 separate tests in 13 cities across the US, AT&T’s 3G network averaged download speeds of 1420 kbps, which gives them a hefty lead over second place finisher Verizon, which averaged 877 kbps. In third was T-Mobile with 868 kbps, and then Sprint with 795 kbps.

AT&T also dramatically improved the reliability of their network. The newest study had AT&T’s network providing a usable broadband connection 94% of the time, up from a last-place 68% reliability in the previous study.

Verizon, which previously had been commonly regarded to have the all-around best 3G network, saw its download performance decline by 8%. The number should be troublesome for Verizon, as according to PC World, only 15% of Verizon’s customer own smartphones, compared with AT&T’s 40 percent. The sheer number of iPhones on AT&T’s network has long been blamed for the company’s poor bandwidth performance.

Verizon responded to PC World by saying that the study’s numbers didn’t match Verizon’s own testing, and that it’s Verizon’s consistency, coverage, and reliability that sets their network apart.

The cities included in the testing were Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.

In PC World’s smartphone testing, which utilized the iPhone, Droid, and other popular smartphones, AT&T took the download speed crown in 9 of the 13 cities. Baltimore had the highest average download speeds at 1686 kbps. Denver was the worst performer at 778 kbps.

AT&T’s upload performance for smartphones was even more impressive, winning in 12 of the 13 cities. Overall, AT&T averaged a 773 kbps upload speed, which is 330 kbps faster than second place finisher Verizon at 443 kbps.

Link: PC World “AT&T Roars Back in PCWorld’s Second 3G Wireless Performance Test”

Among the rumors swirling around this week’s Apple Tablet event are reports that AT&T may lose their stranglehold on the American iPhone market. HotHardware is reporting that they’ve talked to an AT&T insider who claims Ma Bell is losing iPhone exclusivity. They report that this will be announced during Wednesday’s Apple media event, though they didn’t say which company (or companies) would be picking up the slack.

Apparently, AT&T may not be “losing” exclusivity so much as gladly getting rid of it. The sources say the company isn’t fighting to retain the iPhone due to the network stress the popular phone has caused and the resulting complaints about AT&T’s network it has created. AT&T may be picking up a number of other smartphone devices in order to compensate for losing iPhone customers when exclusivity ends.