Verizon Vs AT&T

Riddle me this:

The software release of iPhone 4.0 is in July and it boasts true multitasking capabilities that have not been seen on the iPhone before. AT&T is the ONLY wireless carrier with a network that you can use voice and data at the same time. It is also the largest and strongest network out there, capable of handling heavy iPhone usage and keeping up with the necessary improvements to keep up with the growing iPhone community.

I have read so many ridiculous comments online from people who think that a 4th gen iPhone would be a 4G network phone... Anyone who knows Apple products knows that they always label their products by generation... 1G 2G etc, the 2G iPhone was the first 3G network phone and it was named iPhone 3G. I don't think Apple would name a 4th generation iPhone as 4G, but it's possible. It does NOT mean that it has to be on a 4G network, but some people don't get it. On Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc, you cannot use an iPhone on their network and get the experience out of it that Apple wants you to have. Period. You cannot use voice and data at the same time on ANY of those networks, only on AT&T. So unless verizon is going to spend trillions of dollars rebuilding their entire network from CDMA to GSM, in the next year or 2, an iPhone won't work with Verizon. The technology just isn't there.

It's true that all we ever hear about is dropped calls, coverage area and lack of tethering when it comes to the great faults of AT&T, but these are essentially marketing matters not necessarily indicative of the network technology's capability. I am so accustomed to hearing the spin, and the hope that Verizon will carry the iPhone that I never hear whether or not it is technically possible. I hear it's not *legally* possible.

Last episode of Cranky Geeks, I also heard that part of the technical problem with iPhone networking has to do with the fact that Apple hired Palm's second string dev team to build the networking stack in the iPhone OS itself. I know for a fact that the power of the phone and the update in the OS can make a huge difference, because I experienced that first hand dealing with the second to latest vs the latest Treo back when I was on Sprint two years ago.

Verizon's web/data offering sucks. I went through this exhaustively when I tried to find a way to get out of Sprint and onto the same plan as my wife and kids. They had no phones, not even the Palms they had, that came close to what I wanted. VCast is for teenagers not for tech people who don't care about ringtones, sports scores and music videos.

So the real question for me works like this. Sprint is advertising 4G. It's not real 4G is it? It's just a faster EVDO right?

Comments

[Cobb]

Duh. I get it. CDMA is an inferior technology. That's why VCast sucks.