I had Verizon for years until I switched to the iPhone. I actually have had equal or better reception (Philadelphia marketplace primarily). My wife still has a Verizon phone...I can make calls at my vacation home in the mountains where she can't.
People who think Verizon is some kind of paradise are in for a rude awakening. Their customer service sucks, they do everything they can to cripple their phones and they were more expensive.
1. Your right - Apple could care less about the 90 million people on Verizon and the millions more phones they could sell there. 30,000 sold and 600,00 pre-orders is good enough, right?
2. No one is saying that Apple should leave AT&T. Spreading out the bandwidth hogging phone is what would make everyone happier (including those staying with AT&T.)
3. It's not inferior if I can actually make a phone call on it. I have been an iPhone owner for 3 years. It's not like I don't have experience with the crap that is AT&T's service.
Verizon's network can't handle the load or they'd be bending over backwards to get Apple on their network.
They're playing a marketing game to keep them visible, by not attacking Apple, but mocking AT&T whose network load dwarfs Verizon.
Where do all these people live that they are complaining about ATT's coverage?
I've been with ATT for a very long time, never had a problem.
I travel, never had a problem, never had to go to a Verizon store to get a phone that works on vacation. Get off the plane, turn on the phone, 1 minute later it connects to the local network, no problem. Wether its Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, London, Minsk, Munich; never had a problem. Even with a regular phone with ATT before the iPhone.
Friends with Verizon have bad reception in a high rise in SoBe, in CT at the beach, on highways in Fairfield County. Yet they STILL claim to have a service contract with a superior network.
Is that the power of marketing? If Verizon is so superior, how come the sound quality usually is distorted? Is it the Blackberry they are using or the the Motorola Droid?
When they want to shift the blame on me I tell them that I use a landline (still have one of those) and then they are laughing it off, saying they are in a bad spot. When I say 'but you are with Verizon' I here crickets. VERY CONFUSING! Is marketing that powerful to make people delusional about their cell phone carriers? Apparently it is.
I live in southern CT, travel to NYC a lot and Europe.
Reading those forums makes me wonder if I am just blessed to have service with ATT all the time or may be my iPhone and other regular phones I used to use are just different.
My experience is that for calls, AT&T is a bit better (in NYC) than it used to be. I now rarely have dropped calls (whereas 90% of my calls were dropped when I first got the phone), but there are still many places in the city where either I can't make a call at all or where email and other data services simply don't work.
I have a fear that if a large percentage of the 600,000 phones sold so far (and a much greater number presumably to be sold over this year) are to new customers, it's going to make the situation far worse.
I've posted before that I was in London a few weeks ago and my iPhone 3G worked brilliantly there - far better than in New York. It demonstrated to me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone itself.
As far as Jobs is concerned, if he spends most of his time in Cupertino and Burbank, I'm sure that his reception is fine - it's simply not that dense in those areas and I bet that AT&T has taken special care to make sure the areas in which Jobs travels gets good reception. Perhaps he travels elsewhere, but if he does, you sure don't hear much about it.
I'm with those who feel that if Verizon were suddenly to pick up another few million customers, their service would suck as well, although I will say that I never had a service problem with Verizon when they were my carrier before the iPhone.
But Apple has to realize that their success with 3G based products is going to be limited in the long term unless the service is up to par. You can't have devices that work well only outside of big, dense cities. Forget the complaints on posting boards - AT&T has become an ongoing joke with comedians. They're never going to be able to live that down. I can see a future where Verizon does TV spots ripping the iPhone the way that "Mac" ripped "PC". The worst thing for Apple is if the media or the competition turns the iPhone and iPad into jokes because of AT&T's poor service.
Has anyone released which of those are actual NEW customers? Yea, great for Apple regardless, I understand that... But the true stat would be which of those are NOT upgrades. The interesting numbers will be the August, September adds for AT&T.
So what is everyone doing that upgraded with their old iPhone? Ebay and Craigslist will be like a Wal-Mart for them. Wonder if Apple is ever going to introduce a recycling program and continue to peddle their "green" motif.
... I was in London a few weeks ago and my iPhone 3G worked brilliantly there - far better than in New York. It demonstrated to me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone itself. ...
Precisely.
What so many people fail to realise is that the USA has one of the most patchy, backwards collection of cell networks in the world. Almost any other modern country has better reception and service on average.
I live in Canada and have never in my entire life experienced a "dropped call." I'm sure they happen, but I've never had one.
Verizon's network can't handle the load or they'd be bending over backwards to get Apple on their network.
They're playing a marketing game to keep them visible, by not attacking Apple, but mocking AT&T whose network load dwarfs Verizon.
Last I heard, VZW was doing pretty well for profitabilitv and new subscribers, etc. I think the real problem is that they're control freaks and two control freak companies don't work so well together.
I haven't heard of any hard figures on what load each network is taking, I know iPhone is demanding, but that's not the whole picture.
"...its shackled to AT&T, which not only still operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities, but now has abandoned unlimited, flat-rate data plans. Apple needs a second network."
I wish Uncle Walt lots of luck finding that "second network" with unlimited data, since the 3G data plans from the other carries all cap usage at 5 GB, generally with no option to auto-pay for overages like the new AT&T plan (they may just drop you instead).
I love the tethering on the new AT&T plan for $45 with 2 GB cap; if I exceed the 2 GB I'm automatically charged $10 per GB which is perfect for me.
Currently if you really need unlimited mobile data you'll have to go with Sprint/Clear WiMAX 4G. Hopefully future 4G LTE plans will be a better deal.
Why does it have to be about Verizon at all? Apple could have easily put the iPhone on Tmobile already.
It's really simple. AT&T SHOULDN'T be part of the review. They are because their service and reputation at this point are a big boat anchor. It doesn't matter who else could or should or might have the iPhone at all. The point merely stands that some folks in considering the iPhone will also consider AT&T and make a decision on that point. This isn't true for many other countries but it is true, like it or not for the U.S.
When will Apple do something about this handicap it is lugging around called AT&T? The damage it must be doing to Apple sales is very obvious . There are customers out there who would buy an iPhone in a flash, but they are holding off because of AT&T's poor quality of product. ...
Nobody can scientifically compare AT&T to Verizon when it comes to iPhone. When we had Verizon way back when before June 2007 and many other people had Cingular, Verizon clearly had better signal and call quality. But that was before the iPhone. AT&T has expanded their network as fast as they can, however maybe not fast enough, but we will never know what would have happened had Verizon been the exclusive provider. Probably the same or even worse.
It is impossible to evaluate which network is better for iPhone since there are way too many variables. Do you want simultaneous data and voice? Do you want higher speed data? Do you want better inside building signal, or better worldwide support? You see, there are lots of things to consider before you claim one network is better than the other.
Walt gives ATT what they deserve. I am ashamed to say i pay ATT$100 a month to use the iphone.
MMMAd dropped calls.
If there gonna put a cap on data usage then they should put a cap on the amount of customers they have.
"DO NOT HAVE MORE CUSTOMERS THAN YOUR CRAPPY NETWORK CAN HANDLE"
And when u call them for compensation for all the dropped calls they say "sorry!!!"
I got so feed up 3 months ago i tried to get out of my contract. She said i couldn't and so did the manager.I asked her so what are u gonna do about the 5-8 dropped calls i get every single day and she said "sorry!!"
And the new HSPA upgrade in dallas is CCCCCCCCCCCCCrap!!!!!
Hear me now ATT "DOUBLE YOUR EFFORTS PLEASE!!!"
I live over in Fort Worth, and I'd say I get maybe one or two dropped calls a week on average. Obviously that's not very good, but they are normally calls to my wife while she is out in the sticks. I think at the absolute worst I've had maybe 3 dropped calls in a day. Now, I do more regularly get data connectivity issues and that is very annoying. I'm really hoping that the iPhone 4 with it's new antenna scheme helps with this.
"...its shackled to AT&T, which not only still operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities, but now has abandoned unlimited, flat-rate data plans. Apple needs a second network."
I wish Uncle Walt lots of luck finding that "second network" with unlimited data, since the 3G data plans from the other carries all cap usage at 5 GB, generally with no option to auto-pay for overages like the new AT&T plan (they may just drop you instead).
I love the tethering on the new AT&T plan for $45 with 2 GB cap; if I exceed the 2 GB I'm automatically charged $10 per GB which is perfect for me.
Currently if you really need unlimited mobile data you'll have to go with Sprint/Clear WiMAX 4G. Hopefully future 4G LTE plans will be a better deal.
The Verizon cap is 2 1/2 times more than AT&T and I'm not exactly sure why you're so happy paying an extra $25/month for something AT&T does nothing to earn.
If people are happy with AT&T then so be it. That doesn't mean everyone who wants a Verizon version is wrong. In virtually every customer satisfaction poll AT&T has finished third or last.
I'm really interested as well to see what would happen to Verizon IF they get the iPhone, but I can't see Steve building a separate phone for 1 network in 1 country, its just not worth the effort. With 6.7 billion people in the world most of whom are on a carrier that uses the same protocols/technology as the rest of the world, I wouldn't bother building a separate phone for Verizon either. Give up whiners, accept the fact that you are making a phone call while using a data connection in the middle of nowhere as a miracle of modern technology, and that we are all at the mercy of radio waves. If someone out there thinks they can do it better, then do it and stop whining, start a company and go. Until then, deal, this is what we have. All networks in the US are inferior to the rest of the modern world, if you want to do something about that, lobby the FCC, write Obama, and vote with you wallet, I for one am pretty amazed at the amount of effort AT&T has gone through to support the mass amount of data that is whipping through their network successfully. My biggest gripe about AT&T is not their cell network, but their authorization system, with the millions of dollars they spent, how much would it really cost to beef up their authorization and verification system? Well, I got that off my shoulders, WTF whiners.
To amex: woohoo fairfield!!!! I went to high school there!
Why does it have to be about Verizon at all? Apple could have easily put the iPhone on Tmobile already.
It's really simple. AT&T SHOULDN'T be part of the review. They are because their service and reputation at this point are a big boat anchor. It doesn't matter who else could or should or might have the iPhone at all. The point merely stands that some folks in considering the iPhone will also consider AT&T and make a decision on that point. This isn't true for many other countries but it is true, like it or not for the U.S.
Exactly, its nice to see some intelligence on here! At least t-mobile is on a band that the rest of the world supports (albeit a different radio frequency than the iphone currently uses, but close enough.)
I'm really interested as well to see what would happen to Verizon IF they get the iPhone, but I can't see Steve building a separate phone for 1 network in 1 country, its just not worth the effort. With 6.7 billion people in the world most of whom are on a carrier that uses the same protocols/technology as the rest of the world, I wouldn't bother building a separate phone for Verizon either.
You're ignoring the fact that one of the largest cell phone markets in the world is China - and China also has CDMA (like the U.S., they have both CDMA and GSM).
I'm not advocating a CDMA phone, but don't underestimate the potential market.
You're ignoring the fact that one of the largest cell phone markets in the world is China - and China also has CDMA (like the U.S., they have both CDMA and GSM).
I'm not advocating a CDMA phone, but don't underestimate the potential market.
yes, but I don't see apple doing it for them either, Steve can be stubborn and say screw 'em, look at flash. But you are correct, I just mentally ignore the fact that china has cdma as well. I secede to your point and accuracy.
Comments
I had Verizon for years until I switched to the iPhone. I actually have had equal or better reception (Philadelphia marketplace primarily). My wife still has a Verizon phone...I can make calls at my vacation home in the mountains where she can't.
People who think Verizon is some kind of paradise are in for a rude awakening. Their customer service sucks, they do everything they can to cripple their phones and they were more expensive.
Be careful what you wish for.
Have to agree with this - San Diego
1. Your right - Apple could care less about the 90 million people on Verizon and the millions more phones they could sell there. 30,000 sold and 600,00 pre-orders is good enough, right?
2. No one is saying that Apple should leave AT&T. Spreading out the bandwidth hogging phone is what would make everyone happier (including those staying with AT&T.)
3. It's not inferior if I can actually make a phone call on it. I have been an iPhone owner for 3 years. It's not like I don't have experience with the crap that is AT&T's service.
Verizon's network can't handle the load or they'd be bending over backwards to get Apple on their network.
They're playing a marketing game to keep them visible, by not attacking Apple, but mocking AT&T whose network load dwarfs Verizon.
I've been with ATT for a very long time, never had a problem.
I travel, never had a problem, never had to go to a Verizon store to get a phone that works on vacation. Get off the plane, turn on the phone, 1 minute later it connects to the local network, no problem. Wether its Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, London, Minsk, Munich; never had a problem. Even with a regular phone with ATT before the iPhone.
Friends with Verizon have bad reception in a high rise in SoBe, in CT at the beach, on highways in Fairfield County. Yet they STILL claim to have a service contract with a superior network.
Is that the power of marketing? If Verizon is so superior, how come the sound quality usually is distorted? Is it the Blackberry they are using or the the Motorola Droid?
When they want to shift the blame on me I tell them that I use a landline (still have one of those) and then they are laughing it off, saying they are in a bad spot. When I say 'but you are with Verizon' I here crickets. VERY CONFUSING! Is marketing that powerful to make people delusional about their cell phone carriers? Apparently it is.
I live in southern CT, travel to NYC a lot and Europe.
Reading those forums makes me wonder if I am just blessed to have service with ATT all the time or may be my iPhone and other regular phones I used to use are just different.
Living in Fairfield County, CT.
I have a fear that if a large percentage of the 600,000 phones sold so far (and a much greater number presumably to be sold over this year) are to new customers, it's going to make the situation far worse.
I've posted before that I was in London a few weeks ago and my iPhone 3G worked brilliantly there - far better than in New York. It demonstrated to me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone itself.
As far as Jobs is concerned, if he spends most of his time in Cupertino and Burbank, I'm sure that his reception is fine - it's simply not that dense in those areas and I bet that AT&T has taken special care to make sure the areas in which Jobs travels gets good reception. Perhaps he travels elsewhere, but if he does, you sure don't hear much about it.
I'm with those who feel that if Verizon were suddenly to pick up another few million customers, their service would suck as well, although I will say that I never had a service problem with Verizon when they were my carrier before the iPhone.
But Apple has to realize that their success with 3G based products is going to be limited in the long term unless the service is up to par. You can't have devices that work well only outside of big, dense cities. Forget the complaints on posting boards - AT&T has become an ongoing joke with comedians. They're never going to be able to live that down. I can see a future where Verizon does TV spots ripping the iPhone the way that "Mac" ripped "PC". The worst thing for Apple is if the media or the competition turns the iPhone and iPad into jokes because of AT&T's poor service.
Has anyone released which of those are actual NEW customers? Yea, great for Apple regardless, I understand that... But the true stat would be which of those are NOT upgrades. The interesting numbers will be the August, September adds for AT&T.
So what is everyone doing that upgraded with their old iPhone? Ebay and Craigslist will be like a Wal-Mart for them. Wonder if Apple is ever going to introduce a recycling program and continue to peddle their "green" motif.
Right, Steve is clueless and lives in a bubble. It shows in everything Apple does.
I hope, some day, that I can run my business as clueless as Steve and have over $40billion in the company saving account.
... I was in London a few weeks ago and my iPhone 3G worked brilliantly there - far better than in New York. It demonstrated to me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone itself. ...
Precisely.
What so many people fail to realise is that the USA has one of the most patchy, backwards collection of cell networks in the world. Almost any other modern country has better reception and service on average.
I live in Canada and have never in my entire life experienced a "dropped call." I'm sure they happen, but I've never had one.
Verizon's network can't handle the load or they'd be bending over backwards to get Apple on their network.
They're playing a marketing game to keep them visible, by not attacking Apple, but mocking AT&T whose network load dwarfs Verizon.
Last I heard, VZW was doing pretty well for profitabilitv and new subscribers, etc. I think the real problem is that they're control freaks and two control freak companies don't work so well together.
I haven't heard of any hard figures on what load each network is taking, I know iPhone is demanding, but that's not the whole picture.
I wish Uncle Walt lots of luck finding that "second network" with unlimited data, since the 3G data plans from the other carries all cap usage at 5 GB, generally with no option to auto-pay for overages like the new AT&T plan (they may just drop you instead).
I love the tethering on the new AT&T plan for $45 with 2 GB cap; if I exceed the 2 GB I'm automatically charged $10 per GB which is perfect for me.
Currently if you really need unlimited mobile data you'll have to go with Sprint/Clear WiMAX 4G. Hopefully future 4G LTE plans will be a better deal.
Ot a scratch he said.
It's really simple. AT&T SHOULDN'T be part of the review. They are because their service and reputation at this point are a big boat anchor. It doesn't matter who else could or should or might have the iPhone at all. The point merely stands that some folks in considering the iPhone will also consider AT&T and make a decision on that point. This isn't true for many other countries but it is true, like it or not for the U.S.
Anyway... "Apple needs a second network" = Absolutely!
When will Apple do something about this handicap it is lugging around called AT&T? The damage it must be doing to Apple sales is very obvious . There are customers out there who would buy an iPhone in a flash, but they are holding off because of AT&T's poor quality of product. ...
Nobody can scientifically compare AT&T to Verizon when it comes to iPhone. When we had Verizon way back when before June 2007 and many other people had Cingular, Verizon clearly had better signal and call quality. But that was before the iPhone. AT&T has expanded their network as fast as they can, however maybe not fast enough, but we will never know what would have happened had Verizon been the exclusive provider. Probably the same or even worse.
It is impossible to evaluate which network is better for iPhone since there are way too many variables. Do you want simultaneous data and voice? Do you want higher speed data? Do you want better inside building signal, or better worldwide support? You see, there are lots of things to consider before you claim one network is better than the other.
Walt gives ATT what they deserve. I am ashamed to say i pay ATT$100 a month to use the iphone.
MMMAd dropped calls.
If there gonna put a cap on data usage then they should put a cap on the amount of customers they have.
"DO NOT HAVE MORE CUSTOMERS THAN YOUR CRAPPY NETWORK CAN HANDLE"
And when u call them for compensation for all the dropped calls they say "sorry!!!"
I got so feed up 3 months ago i tried to get out of my contract. She said i couldn't and so did the manager.I asked her so what are u gonna do about the 5-8 dropped calls i get every single day and she said "sorry!!"
And the new HSPA upgrade in dallas is CCCCCCCCCCCCCrap!!!!!
Hear me now ATT "DOUBLE YOUR EFFORTS PLEASE!!!"
I live over in Fort Worth, and I'd say I get maybe one or two dropped calls a week on average. Obviously that's not very good, but they are normally calls to my wife while she is out in the sticks. I think at the absolute worst I've had maybe 3 dropped calls in a day. Now, I do more regularly get data connectivity issues and that is very annoying. I'm really hoping that the iPhone 4 with it's new antenna scheme helps with this.
"...its shackled to AT&T, which not only still operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities, but now has abandoned unlimited, flat-rate data plans. Apple needs a second network."
I wish Uncle Walt lots of luck finding that "second network" with unlimited data, since the 3G data plans from the other carries all cap usage at 5 GB, generally with no option to auto-pay for overages like the new AT&T plan (they may just drop you instead).
I love the tethering on the new AT&T plan for $45 with 2 GB cap; if I exceed the 2 GB I'm automatically charged $10 per GB which is perfect for me.
Currently if you really need unlimited mobile data you'll have to go with Sprint/Clear WiMAX 4G. Hopefully future 4G LTE plans will be a better deal.
The Verizon cap is 2 1/2 times more than AT&T and I'm not exactly sure why you're so happy paying an extra $25/month for something AT&T does nothing to earn.
If people are happy with AT&T then so be it. That doesn't mean everyone who wants a Verizon version is wrong. In virtually every customer satisfaction poll AT&T has finished third or last.
To amex: woohoo fairfield!!!! I went to high school there!
Why does it have to be about Verizon at all? Apple could have easily put the iPhone on Tmobile already.
It's really simple. AT&T SHOULDN'T be part of the review. They are because their service and reputation at this point are a big boat anchor. It doesn't matter who else could or should or might have the iPhone at all. The point merely stands that some folks in considering the iPhone will also consider AT&T and make a decision on that point. This isn't true for many other countries but it is true, like it or not for the U.S.
Exactly, its nice to see some intelligence on here! At least t-mobile is on a band that the rest of the world supports (albeit a different radio frequency than the iphone currently uses, but close enough.)
I'm really interested as well to see what would happen to Verizon IF they get the iPhone, but I can't see Steve building a separate phone for 1 network in 1 country, its just not worth the effort. With 6.7 billion people in the world most of whom are on a carrier that uses the same protocols/technology as the rest of the world, I wouldn't bother building a separate phone for Verizon either.
You're ignoring the fact that one of the largest cell phone markets in the world is China - and China also has CDMA (like the U.S., they have both CDMA and GSM).
I'm not advocating a CDMA phone, but don't underestimate the potential market.
You're ignoring the fact that one of the largest cell phone markets in the world is China - and China also has CDMA (like the U.S., they have both CDMA and GSM).
I'm not advocating a CDMA phone, but don't underestimate the potential market.
yes, but I don't see apple doing it for them either, Steve can be stubborn and say screw 'em, look at flash. But you are correct, I just mentally ignore the fact that china has cdma as well. I secede to your point and accuracy.