I spent literally the entire morning on the phone with tech support for two separate companies. It wasn’t because I was on hold for an unreasonable amount of time or because the support people were like you might have initially suspected.

It was because AT&T repeatedly dropped my calls. It happened five or six times throughout the course of the morning—inconvenient, sure, but even more so because I never talked to a single human.

Then I got wise and I called them over wifi with Skype! And I called the second one over 3G with iCall! And neither of them dropped my calls! And the sound quality was perfect!

Why am I giving so much money to AT&T? I essentially have no need for their services at this point outside of data. It’s painful to be forced to pay arbitrarily for something that is so dysfunctional when free, clearly superior alternatives are out there. Between RCN and AT&T, it’s enough to drive this Chicagoan crazy.