With the release of the iPhone in less than a day, the question arises as to how Apple's partner AT&T is prepared to support the new phones 3G capabilities. From what I've discovered this morning while driving around my business location for a 5 Mile radius, 3G is not where it is supposed to be.

It's nice that AT&T provides coverage maps as to where you could expect to find good 3G coverage. Well think again, I've driven around my community seeking where my best 3G connectivity can be found. According to AT&T customer support the coverage maps are accurate, but according to my findings in my 5 mile circle - They lie.

Maybe not an intentional fib, but maybe the maps just project where to expect coverage within a certain time period, not a current active location indicator.

Not only will we have to wait in line to activate our new 3G iPhone but it appears that we will have to search around for actual 3G coverage that we will be paying $10/mo more than current iPhone data users. I did this investigation a month ago with the same results.

That is reason why I tried again a day before the release of the new iPhone, in hopes that these areas would be active by the time the iPhone 3G was released. Any of the cells on the above map are 2G only even though they are marked Dark Blue to indicate 3G service availability. It appears that I'm not the only person experiencing the Missing AT&T 3G, Eric Zeman reports in the July 9th InformationWeek article that he is not seeing 3G within a 5 Mile Radius either.

So, the customers in Canada are getting their better data plans and we here in the US will be paying $10/mo additional for the same service we had with our Gen One iPhone. Personally I'm going to try to negotiate the old rate plan until 3G is available in my work area or I'll look for a 16GB Gen One at the Apple Refurb Store to take advantage of the larger storage for apps from the App Store.

Let us know what you think over in the comments and forums.