AT&T’s network problems with the iphone (in some markets) have been notorious, and some iphone users may get more out of their phones if they switch networks.
Everybody seems to think Verizon is so amazing. Every house I’ve lived in since I had a phone(5 places or so) have had crappy Verizon service. None of these were out in the sticks, only 2 could be considered a little out of town. While it seems I get decent service outside of civilization, which is everywhere around here, I can’t get rid of my landline because my home service always sucks.
Before I got too excited, I’d wait to see what happens when Verizon’s network gets loaded up. They’ll possibly still test out better than AT&T, but it’s pretty easy to get good numbers when there are only a handful of devices on the SF network (I don’t think the iPhone is GA for Verizon yet, is it?).
Joe
I have a Droid on Verizon, and have never had a dropped call issue. The Times review yesterday mentioned that the reviewer drove around several cities with an AT&T iPhone and a Verizon iPhone both connected to MovieLine (which seems to never shut up.) The AT&T phone dropped calls multiple times, the Verizon one never.
What am I missing? We all know (really) that AT&T is worse than Verizon. I honestly was expecting some kind of subliminal dildo-smack.
My guess is postcards was as well.
Why does this thread even exist, if not for the dildos?
Joe
Yes, but no one has a Verizon iPhone yet. Of course Verizon’s better now; we want to know if it will be better once several millions people jump to Verizon when the iPhone comes out.
They won’t be. AT&T was the absolute top dog in networking before the iPhone. Then millions of fanboys and technophiles alike went to AT&T for the iPhone and all those people crashed the network. Same thing will happen with Verizon. Mark my words.
So I can expect that the shift of users from AT&T to Verizon will improve AT&T’s performance for its remaining customers (namely, me)?
Meh, I don’t know about that. I know it’s only one data point, but AT&T service was nonexistent in my town when I moved out here in 2002 (and this is nowhere near the sticks, either). I’m not talking intermittent service, bad service, or spotty service, I’m talking NO service. When AT&T found out where I’d moved to they actually waived the remainder of my contract. So I’m not particularly impressed by that claim.
That’s an artifact of how wireless spectrum was auctioned. There were two(?) carriers in each market, and various companies bid for the rights to provide service. If AT&T (or one of the companies they’ve bought) wasn’t a winner where you are, no service (remember roaming charges?).
I’d guess there are agreements in place to carry each others traffic, but if you landed somewhere with no other company sharing with AT&T, then it’s in their interest to let you out of the contract - bad PR if nothing else (and potentially a state or FCC regulation mandating it).
Joe
So, you think a Verizon iPhone works on a different network from the Verizon Android based phone?
Like I said, I have a Verizon Droid, and it has never dropped a call. It also worked fine in the middle of San Francisco.
What? Of course your service is good now. He’s talking about what will happen to the network when it suddenly grows by a couple million users. He said nothing about Android or iPhone working on two different networks.
The other thing is that the carriers use different technologies; GSM vs CDMA, so you can’t roam from AT&T to Verizon (for example). In Europe, as I understand it, everyone uses GSM so roaming is easier.
Well, kind of. Your Droid is on the current Verizon network. The iPhone will be on the current Verizon network with a bajillion more smartphones suddenly added to it.
The network will probably be the same, and that’s actually the problem. People want the iPhone, and people have also heard pretty much nothing bad bad things about AT&T. The result of which will be thousands of San Franciscans buying Verizon iPhones and suddenly crowding onto Verizon’s network all at once, which will slow everything down for you.
Are you kidding? This is AT&T. They will conclude that all the customers who stick with them have been successfully conditioned to accept lousy service, and cap your data rates to whatever you’re getting now. Then, in 6 months, they’ll offer an “upgrade” to your service for an extra fee that will allow you to access half of the performance improvement. (They’ll reserve the other half for potential future “upgrades”…and just to be jerks.)
In the last year and a half or so a bajillion people moved from dumb phones to smartphones on the Verizon network - with no loss of quality, as far as I could tell. Verizon was able to manage that not totally expected jump in usage, I see no reason to think they couldn’t manage this more expected one.
I’m getting the feeling that iPhone users think that no other phone can download pictures or movies or websites or Youtube. We Android users can hog bandwidth too!
iPhone users do use 1.5 times the data the average smart phone user does.
Not a ton more, but more, on average.
Hey, I’m well aware. I just installed FroYo on my G1. And yeah, more people are using smartphones across all networks every day (and I’d argue that that’s entirely expected), but the iPhone, for lack of a better word, transcends that. People LOVE that fucker. LOVE IT. I mean, I’ve definitely learned to love the Android OS, but my mom, two years later still calls it my “iPhone thingy.” Apple’s Reality Distortion Field is a real thing.
And now it’s available on a network that’s not AT&T, so on 2/9 or whenever it comes out, there will be thousands upon thousands of new data hogs jumping onto your network at 9am that morning. I mean, it’s possible that Verizon truly has prepared for this and has built some kind of insane infrastructure for it, but history has not shown that to be likely.