Sounds like someone sliced a few more fiber optic cables and screwed up badly.

Not related to at&t directly, but living in chicago, i don't see how we are part of a eastcoast network. Chicago being pretty much directly in the middle of the country and the state directly east of us is Indiana which is still considered "Mid West" united states.

In light of how horrible the 3G network coverage wouldn't it make more sense to have a "central us" network?

Might be too logical for a telecom to understand that but even our goverment understands Illinois is in the "central standard" timezone.

It just seem strange to only have eastcoast and westcoast when the entire country considers the middle the "midwest". 

That is just too big a area to be shuttered onto a easter network or western network.

It is no wonder so many were affected by the outage if there are only so few routers setup by at&t problems like this are going to be widespread as people ramp up 3G use.