Dave and his wife don’t have any problems with data on their iPhones when they’re in their home, since they have wi-fi. It’s when they leave home but stay in the neighborhood that they can’t connect to the Internet. While it’s not a life-altering problem, they were able to get online from the pool only last year. What’s going on? AT&T isn’t terribly concerned.

My wife and I both have iPhones through AT&T. In the last year our data service has gone from decent to nonexistent in the area around our home. AT&T is no help, they tell us to use our home Wifi in the home. We normally do, but if we’re at the park down the road, at the pool, our phones now time out trying to connect to the internet. We have a strong 5-bar 3G signal. A year ago we had good service in the same spots. I suspect that they’ve just completely overloaded the local network and haven’t kept up with supporting the network infrastructure.

What can we do? Can we break our contract without penalty over this? We still manage to use our data plan, but this is one of the primary places we would make use of our phones. AT&T has been no help whatsoever. We’d consider going to another provider if we could at this point.

The only way to find out for sure would be to contact AT&T, and to keep talking to people until you find someone sympathetic. It could be a problem with a tower in your neighborhood, and pestering the Death Star could pay off for you and for your neighbors.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.