Take the poll here.

Or have you been holding out on buying an iPhone until it is on Verizon?

seeing that ATT service is so horrific in many areas including Ann Arbor and areas around plymouth,,I would and will jump in a heartbeat

Janp,

Did you answer Terry's poll?

Did you try singing "Hail to the Victors!"?

Just saw an article in the paper about 3-4 days ago that states it's highly likely Apple is going to renew its contract with AT&T. It looks like we'll have to wait several more years if we want an iphone from someone other than AT&T.

I read that too, but I don't believe it. Here's why: Let's say that AT&T was the greatest provider in the world (they're not, but work with me). Even so, there is a limited number of potential customers with any one carrier. Going exclusive at first is done by a lot of cell phone manufacturers. It gets them a a better deal. However, once that carrier is saturated, you have to move on to other carriers if you want to grow your handset market share.

So while renewing a contract with AT&T is one thing, making it exclusive again would be a bad thing in the view of stock holders and analysts.

The iPhone has been pulling customers away from other providers to AT&T in droves. In Verizon's case, they offer really bad phones which allows them to milk customers with an outdated business model. I think the phone manufacturers have gotten the message to a large extent, and so have US service providers. Seeing as how Sprint and T-Mobile might be merging soon, they've probably gotten the message.

Speaking from an ethnocentric viewpoint, the problem with an iPhone is, it's a single band, single network phone with slightly above average range. [ Other people might have some other issues with the iPhone. ]

The problem with Ann Arbor during football games is, that's a peak event for AT&T's network. AT&T could decide it's not worth the expense to invest in bandwidth for an event that occurs about 7 times a year for 4 hours. Also, AT&T's network in Ann Arbor may simply be saturated, and there might not be any room for expansion.

If I may be so bold as to propose an ethical dilemma for Ann Arbor iPhone users, what is so important about clogging a phone network with meaningless claptrap, when an emergency might occur and the phone network might be required for an EMS/police/fire call?

Getting back to cases, a Verizon iPhone might not be so useful for people who travel overseas. Or even to Canada or Mexico. Verizon is not a GSM network, so the utility of a CDMA network might be limited. GSM is a much bigger worldwide market, so AT&T probably will want to continue its iPhone business. Hopefully, Verizon competition will encourage AT&T to improve their network and atrocious billing procedures.

If you really want excellent phone access (over features and style), you'd probably buy an old triple or quad band phone with a stubby antenna (but not based on Windows Mobile x).

quote:

In Verizon's case, they offer really bad phones which allows them to milk customers with an outdated business model.

I don't agree. Verizon offers the same phones from the same manufacturers that the other carriers offer (with the exception of the iPhone of course). I have an LG Dare through Verizon and IMHO, it's the bast damn phone I ever owned.

I'm with Terry on this one. Apple has pretty much saturated the AT&T customer market and they need to branch out. Considering that there are more Verizon customers than AT&T, if Apple stayed exclusive with AT&T, it would be one of the dumbest moves they ever made.

The only fly in the ointment, as you mentioned, is the whole GSM vs CDMA question. It will be interesting on how they work that out with other carriers.