With a recent Consumer Reports (CR) survey revealing that AT&T is the "worst" of the top four US carriers - Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T - in terms of consumer satisfaction, the carrier said on Tuesday it is taking the negative reviews of its network seriously. However, the carrier also added that the CR observation lagged reality.

Addressing the audience at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Glenn Lurie - AT&T President of Emerging Devices - said that the carrier had invested over $18 billion in network infrastructure to improve reception. He further reiterated the company executives' earlier statement that AT&T was trying its best to meet the ever-increasing demands of its growing number of subscribers.

The CR survey's finding that AT&T's service as the worst in the US, knocking reliability for voice, data and text-messaging services, is a further substantiation of earlier complaints, from customers as well as critics, that the reliability of AT&T's wireless data and voice network services falls much below that of its competitors.

With the majority of the problems that AT&T is plagued with arising chiefly due to the increasing demand from the users of the Apple iPhone - for which AT&T is the exclusive carrier in the US - Lurie said he remains in constant touch with Apple's Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

Saying that "I talk to Apple every day," Lurie added that the regular communication between AT&T and Apple has helped the two companies resolve some of the network issues.