A big part of the accelerating uptake of smartphones comes from, what I believe is, the fact most people don't like talking on the phone. When your smartphone offers you the option of SMS, MMS, full-function email (often to multiple, and especially separate work/personal, servers), GoogleVoice transcriptions, and complete syncing to your work and/or personal computers the need to talk to people that you don't want to suddenly goes away. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm willing to bet that over the past three years the average number of talk-time minutes has gone down for all carriers, but especially for AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
Of course that doesn't let AT&T off the hook for improved but still fairly awful coverage in places like the SF Bay Area and Manhattan. However, the fact that Apple and AT&T are still selling boatloads of iPhones despite this well-known fact just shows how little call-quality matters, at least to smartphone buyers.
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