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Why Verizon Doesn't Want You To Buy an iPhone
Hugh Pickens writes "Sascha Segan writes that although Verizon adamantly denies steering customers away from Apple's iPhones in favor of 4G LTE-enabled Android devices, he is convinced that Verizon has a strong reason to push buyers away from the iPhone. 'Here's the problem,' writes Segan. 'Verizon has spent millions of dollars rolling out its massive LTE network' but the carrier can't easily add capacity on its old 3G network. Since the iPhone isn't a 4G phone, sales of Verizon iPhones just crowd up their already busy 3G network while their 4G network has plenty of space. 'The iPhone is a great device. But it's making a crowded network more crowded. Until the LTE iPhone comes along, to rebalance its network, Verizon may quietly push Android phones.'"
Add an unlimited plan that applies to 4g only. That'll give Android users some bragging rights for at least a few months. Then, when the iPhone gets 4g, Verizon won't need the plan and can drop it, and that'll allow Android users to blame the iPhone for ruining the party.
The CB App. What's your 20?
There was no intent to "badmouth" CDMA. As you correctly point out, Wideband CDMA ultimately won the day as a technology. Your recap of the technologies' comparative strengths is very well written. But when I spoke of CDMA as having dead-ended, I was referring to the vendor technology path, not the underlying technology itself. Most people are only familiar with "CDMA" and "GSM" as the two competing cellular technology families in the US, without necessarily understanding what that means (other than "one has a SIM card and the other doesn't.") Telling them that their 2G "GSM" is really EDGE - and their 3G HSPA acts more like CDMA than GSM - will for most audiences just confuse the issue. So I stand by my assertion that "CDMA" the technology path is dead, and "GSM" is moving forward, but there's no value judgement on the technologies underlying that implicit in my comments.
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