Unhappy with your AT&T Wireless network coverage? Just wait until the 3G iPad hits the airwaves.

People are concerned. Very concerned.

Consider some recent events:

The FCC, represented by Phil Bellaria, director of scenario planning, and John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, have voiced their concerns about an unnamed GSM carrier’s ability to handle the coming iPad traffic:

With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn’t choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing, or frustrate mobile broadband’s ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy.

New York City (my stomping grounds) and San Francisco – both hotspots for early adopters –  have been hit hard by outages, dropped calls, delayed messages, slow web access, and service interruptions.

Last year, Foursquare chose to launch their location-aware iPhone app at the SXSW conference and nearly brought the A&T network in Austin, TX to its knees.

The FCC is so concerned about capacity that the government agency is considering a plan to ”pay broadcasters to vacate airwaves it could use to alleviate network strain caused by the surging use of smartphones.“