Is the iPhone headed to Verizon?
The noise around a possible move of the iPhone from AT&T is reaching a fever pitch as shortfalls in the AT&T wireless network become more apparent and as iPhone users complain more about it.
There have been many blogs and analysis pieces written lately which point out specific problems with the AT&T network, especially as compared to the network at Verizon. AT&T has been blamed for everything from dropped calls and poor coverage to draining the batteries in iPhones too quickly. Now a column on Techcrunch very strongly asks a number of critical questions.
Although the evidence is largely empirical, there is a growing body of complaints and even a few fairly scientific studies that appear to be saying that the AT&T wireless network could be holding the iPhone back. When people buy something as functionally complete as the iPhone, they expect that the infrastructure will be at least as good as the phone. This has simply not been the case. As an example of an inexcusable situation, AT&T’s visual voicemail notification system has been down for many users for several days, or perhaps even weeks. That could be hundreds of thousands of important business and personal messages delayed for that long a period of time.
This is hardly the only problem that has cropped up with AT&T iPhone service during the past few years, but it may be one of the more telling. Here is a short list of problems experience by iPhone users:
- Basic cell services like MMS and tethering will not work on the AT&T network.
- Surveys by users have shown that AT&T download speeds a the worst by a major service provider in the cell industry.
- Users have been repeatedly unable to activate their iPhones at busy times.
- As iPhones struggle to find a strong signal and fail, the batteries in those phones drain faster than they would if wireless coverage was better.
- Coverage at major evens, as witness the SXSW event this year, when there was too little service to come close to serving all of the iPhone users in attendance.
- AT&T has had two years to correct all these problems and has failed miserably.
All of this points to a need for Apple to move away from AT&T as quickly as they can, and hopefully in the direction of Verizon, the carrier with the best wireless network in the U.S. But even as much as a phenomenon as Verizon is in the wireless business, Apple is a bigger phenomenon in the handset business. Most observers feel that the best should be paired with the best, and that Apple could get as sweet a deal with Verizon as it has gotten with AT&T. There is no reason for Apple to re-up with AT&T for another year. They should move to Verizon now before horrid service erodes their user base.
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