The die is cast. Management at work is ordering my new iPhone 5 with service on the company dime\u2026on Verizon. Thus severing a relationship with AT&T going back to 1998, interrupted only by a year on T-Mobile in 2004. \u00a0So why now, when Verizon has clearly been the top provider in the Bay Area for a decade?<\/p>\n
Couple of reasons:<\/p>\n
1) LTE. \u00a0There’s no beating around the bush: Verizon’s LTE deployment is miles and years ahead of AT&T’s. \u00a0It’s been damn near bulletproof on my iPad, which was the big test. \u00a0Add to that, this: the Verizon iPhone 5 supports five different LTE bands, including some abroad and some that could conceivably be redeployed in the US. \u00a0Which is significant because…<\/p>\n
2) Verizon’s iPhones are shipping unlocked. \u00a0You can pop a SIM in them and get service with another carrier – and with either AT&T or T-Mobile, I could get the exact same service currently available on my iPhone 4S, never mind what I might find roaming internationally with my Virgin Mobile SIM. \u00a0For the first time, I can get a Verizon phone that can not only be used abroad, but with a carrier right here in the US at need. \u00a0No hardware lock-in makes for a much<\/em> more convincing case. Plus I can now use the same phone internationally, which means I don’t even have to retain my unlocked 4S for travel abroad.<\/p>\n 3) With the proliferation of Wi-Fi on public transit, it’s now possible for me to have some form of Wi-Fi connection all the way to work except for the portions on foot or on Caltrain. \u00a0This takes away a lot of the disadvantage of CDMA at being unable to do voice and data simultaneously. (And since that advantage is technically nonexistent on LTE, I expect that to cease to be a problem as Verizon shifts more and more of its network to LTE.) \u00a0Hell, there’s free Wi-Fi at the mall, at every coffee shop, at the airport (and about !-ing time), all over Googleburg – no reason not to use it.<\/p>\n 4) Apple has supposedly beaten the longstanding issues with battery life on CDMA devices – to all accounts, the iPhone 5 is an all-day device. \u00a0How true that will be with my usage patterns remains to be seen, but for the time being there’s no reason to think I won’t be able to get by with the new gadget. Even on my existing 4S on AT&T, the battery performance under iOS 6 seems to have improved.<\/p>\n But the biggest criterion of all:<\/p>\n 5) I’m not paying for it. Whatever the merits of VZW’s plans or data provision or what have you – it’s somebody else’s problem now. My subsidy will go away but I’ll still be a net $40 a month to the good as a result of finally taking the work phone.<\/p>\n Now I just have to wait for company approvals and for the thing to actually ship. \u00a0Which by my calculations means I’ll have it just in time for Thanksgiving…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The die is cast. Management at work is ordering my new iPhone 5 with service on the company dime\u2026on Verizon. Thus severing a relationship with AT&T going back to 1998, interrupted only by a year on T-Mobile in 2004. \u00a0So why now, when Verizon has clearly been the top provider in the Bay Area for … <\/p>\n