Yes, its official; the iPhone is now coming to Verizon. And while that is great news to Mac geeks everywhere, current Verizon customers are fearful that another AT&T "Titanic" incident will happen to them.
When Apple released the iPhone to AT&T (formerly Cingular) customers, consumers and techies alike were drooling over the prospect of a "Blackberry killer", a phone with the potential to kill off all competition, the quality to make it a number one with phone consumers, and the technical dream that would make geeks wet themselves. In a way, the iPhone did all that and more. However, what tempered the obviously-much deserved praise of every consecutive release of the newest incarnation of the iPhone was, to put it bluntly, the crappy data network. Cingular/AT&T's (at the time) slightly primitive data network was not able to handle the immense amount of data needed by iPhone users to maximize the internet's potential on the device. And when the iPhone's App Store took off with data-intensive apps being used daily by insatiable users, it was only downhill for AT&T. Even the massive amounts of early revenue made by the iPhone's sale couldn't raise the giant that was once AT&T/Cingular. Today, in a recent poll, AT&T rated on the bottom of customer satisfaction among users. And the second-most loved carrier only to regional carrier US Cellular? Verizon Wireless.
I've been told from those inside Verizon that the iPhone launch won't hurt the data network; the same network that has been rated the most reliable (and one of the fastest-growing) in the US. However, that was also Cingular's line to consumers. Personally, I believe that Verizon's network won't be hurt by the iPhone launch. There are too many other data-intensive devices (Android and BlackBerry, to name a few) on the market and in the network already using data at a furious pace. The VeriPhone will only enter the network as another data-eater with the rest of them.
...And I'm still waiting for a white iPhone...
