Earlier this week, blogger and 25-year communications industry vet Brough Turner started a bit of a ruckus with a blog post suggesting that AT&T's wireless broadband network problems were partially AT&T's fault, and not just attributable to the massive influx of data-hungry iPhone users. Though he admittedly didn't have access to the AT&T network guts or first hand experience running a HSDPA GSM network, Turner speculated that AT&T had misconfigured their network, specifically in terms of latency and RNC buffers:It's fairly amazing how far and wide Turner's analysis resonated across the Internet, with literally dozens of stories quickly popping up on how AT&T's problems may have been partially their own fault. That of course put AT&T's primary wireless PR protectorate Seth Bloom back into his unenviable position of having to play public relations bomb disposal, and Bloom spent the week contacting dozens of blogs to deny the allegation.

"We believe that recent online speculation regarding AT&T wireless network configuration settings is without foundation," says the company. "Allegations in these posts regarding packet loss network settings are incorrect." "The AT&T wireless network is designed and engineered to deliver the highest possible levels of capacity and performance," says AT&T, who insists that their standing as operator of the fastest 3G network is "validated by multiple third-party testing organizations."

Yes and no. While AT&T's HSDPA network is technically capable of faster speeds than Verizon and Sprint EVDO, it it very often doesn't act that way -- particularly in congested networks like New York City. A recent suite of tests by several news outlets highlighted how AT&T's technically faster network quite often under-performs (see both PC World and Wired tests from earlier this year).

The thing is, whether Turner's diagnosis is accurate or not, AT&T has continually found itself on the receiving end of network quality criticism for a reason -- namely that their network isn't performing well for a significant number of their users. AT&T continues to insist that they're quickly adding cell cites, backhaul and migrating markets to the more capable 850Mhz GSM band. Still, with the kind of wireless data revenues AT&T pulls in each quarter, there's really no excuse for the problems in the first place or moving forward -- no matter what the cause.