If you find this metric as astonishing as I do, consider this: The increase in Bay Area data traffic is actually below the national average–significantly below. According to AT&T (T) CTO John Donovan, 3G data traffic on the company’s wireless network has risen nearly 5,000 percent in the past 12 quarters nationally (see chart below; click to enlarge).

“Today, we’re seeing unprecedented growth in mobile broadband traffic,” Donovan said during his keynote at the Open Mobile Conference on Nov. 5. “This growth has required extensive rethinking of wireless networks as we know them, as well as significant advances in the supporting IP backbone and other infrastructure.”

A 5,000 percent increase in 3G data traffic: That’s an astonishing figure. Seems to me it’s entirely likely that any carrier that had been first with the iPhone–including catcalling rival Verizon (VZ)–would have suffered network troubles similar to those that plague AT&T today.

No other U.S. carrier offers a super-smartphone that has sold as well as the iPhone and that people use much like a laptop. Sure, Android and Palm (PALM) webOS devices are used in this way as well, but there are far fewer of them and they have significantly fewer data-hungry apps.

Research in Motion (RIMM) offers some BlackBerries that are used this way, but only some, and there are only 3,000 or so apps available for them. iPhone owners have 100,000 apps from which to choose. And while it’s obvious that there are more BlackBerries in use than iPhones, some of these rely on AT&T’s network, which only compounds the carrier’s problems.

So, really, any carrier that had been first to market with the iPhone would have seen its network overtaxed, especially after Apple (AAPL) launched the iPhone 3G and the iTunes App Store. Those events effectively upended traditional planning models for network capacity in a way that no one was prepared for.

Perhaps other carriers would have fared a bit better. Verizon’s 3G network, even back in 2007, was much deeper and broader than AT&T’s. But could it really have supported a 5,000 percent increase in data traffic without incident? I’m not so sure.

Which is not to say that AT&T is blameless. Its network has lagged and continues to do so, and the iPhone and the massive surge in data traffic it brought with it are not entirely responsible for that.

But they are obviously a big factor. It will be interesting, then, to see how Verizon’s network holds up in comparison if and when the carrier gets the iPhone.

[Image Credit: Morgan Stanley Managing Director Mary Meeker]

“We know you’ve been eager for this service so we wanted to offer a quick update on the launch plans for MMS on Friday, Sept. 25,” AT&T explained on its official Facebook page. “Late morning, Pacific Time, on Friday, the new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready to download through iTunes.”

Assuming everything goes as planned. And sources inside AT&T (T) tell DSL Reports that the carrier is “very nervous” that it might not. “AT&T and its MMS partners are already seeing ‘record traffic during peak hours of the night’ with just the users selected for testing,” the publication says. “That early testing has been a little rocky, with AT&T seeing a fairly significant test outage yesterday that has them rushing to beef up their MMSC messaging servers. Estimates among those working on the project are that traffic on AT&T’s wireless network will be about 40 percent higher all day on Friday as iPhone users fire pictures and video at one another.”

Canada’s Bell Mobility, which became the device’s exclusive Canadian carrier back in May, this morning announced a ship date and price for the Pre. It is scheduled to go on sale Aug. 27 at a price of $599.95 without a contract and $199.95 with a three-year contract.

“We’re very excited to bring the revolutionary Palm Pre and the Palm webOS mobile platform to Canadians exclusively on Bell’s national wireless network–the largest high-speed 3G network in Canada,” Wade Oosterman, president of Bell Mobility and chief brand officer for Bell, said in a gushing statement.

“Considering the highly successful US introduction of the Palm Pre by Sprint in June and fast-growing Palm Pre buzz among Canadian mobile users,” Oosterman added, “Bell and our retail partners are preparing for high demand for this breakthrough phone.”

Ugly just isn’t going to cut it in today’s mobile device market. That’s what Dell is finding as it attempts to build a smartphone capable of holding its own against the RIM’s (RIMM) Blackberry, Apple’s (APPL) iPhone and Palm’s (PALM) upcoming Pre.

According to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, the PC maker’s first smartphone prototypes have been rejected by wireless network operators, which found them dull compared with current and upcoming devices. “From our conversation with supply chain and industry sources, it appears that it ultimately came down to lack of carrier interest and small subsidies, making it difficult for Dell to make a profit,” Wu explained in a message to investors, noting that prototypes running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile and Google’s (GOOG) Android both were dismissed by carriers for their “lack of differentiation.”

Apparently, Dell’s “nondescript and gray” aesthetic just doesn’t translate to the cellphone market.

Undaunted by such criticisms, Dell (DELL) has gone back to the drawing board in the hopes of designing a more appealing device and may even consider an acquisition to spur such efforts along. Said Wu, “Dell remains committed to the cell phone space as it appreciates the opportunity in smart phones and the longer-term cannibalization potential of PCs.”

Interesting to hear that the Bold shares the iPhone’s erratic 3G connection because the device doesn’t share the same Infineon Technologies (IFX) chip believed to be the source of the iPhone’s troubles. Which means the only real point of commonality between the two phones is AT&T’s 3G network, which may still be a bit too immature for either of them.