Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Steve Goodwin

An AT&T Wireless data outage this morning throughout the eastern U.S. may have been caused by, well, excessive iPhone usage...

"AT&T and iPhone users all along the East Coast - including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and Virginia - are reporting that Web, e-mail, and all other data access is dead, even though their mobile phones are showing '3G' and 'EDGE' icons and full service bars," writes Yahoo's Ben Patterson.

"An AT&T spokesman acknowledged that the network experienced a routing problem that had been corrected about noon EDT," writes Computerworld's Matt Hamblen.

And on the same theme, according to The Dallas Morning News' Andrew Smith, "An 18-page complaint filed in San Diego says that AT&T and Apple have knowingly sold enough iPhones to repeatedly overwhelm AT&T's 3G network. By doing this, the suit argues, the two companies have broken their promise to provide 3G data service inside certain areas to iPhone users."

More here from Wired ... more here from Gizmodo ... more here from Reuters ... more here from Ars Technica ... and more here from Macworld.