Agreed 110%.

I agree. I also see when AT&T and Apple break up, we will hear the same people whinning about Verzion and the Iphone. Its the same ole story, everyone screams for the number backup quarterback until he gets in the game and he stinks too.

I think this is pretty spot on. I think it's really indicative of what's going on at AT&T and the way they've managed their network and their services: it's clear AT&T hasn't adapted to the popularity of the iPhone, and they haven't sunk the money they're getting into network upgrades to support their new users and devices - the complaints seem to keep rolling in as time passes.

I'm also curious about the "iphone's" perception up there that another carrier would be in pretty much the same boat: that a Verizon iPhone would wind up with the same problems - I disagree, but I think Verizon would definitely have similar challenges (I just think Verizon is a carrier set up to handle that kind of traffic and they really don't right now, but only to my knowledge).

In any case, all of that might be strawmen to the real "what if" that's at the core here: we may be stopping at "What if Apple didn't exist," but we could take the analogy farther: "what if data over cellular didn't exist?" Let's look back at cellular networks before Blackberry devices and smartphones and such: if we put all-voice traffic on today's networks, would we like them better? What if we segregated voice and data on separate networks or bandwidths?

While I'm leery of the "what if Apple didn't exist" angle, I'm definitely curious of what the services we use would look like without their influence...or with out other influences, for that matter.

wow, a world without Apple. I imagine the fanboiz would latch onto something else, but sounds.. pleasant.

Anyway, yes, agree totally with this. I had a 3G RAZR when the iphone came out. Both EDGE and 3G data were consistently low latency and quite fast before the iphone. The first iphone utterly destroyed the EDGE experience, but at least I still had 3G. Since the 3G iphone, the network ranges from pretty good once in awhile to completely unusable. Yeah, AT&T didn't keep up, but on the flip side, the iphone is obnoxiously chatty.

iPhone on Verizon would make iPhone the preeminent champion in the mobile industry. With that said, would it be cool anymore? The Palm Pre is now offering more and more applications and even more powerful is the ability to multitask and run applications in the background. Android will also be a surprise as the OS should get better and better soon. Hardware with HTC, Motorola and many others should now provide interesting slants on how smartphones will be used and how they will be specialized for specific purposes not just as phones, email, texting, crappy cameras, media players, etc. So if I'm seeing clearly, the days of having "exclusive" contracts for only one wireless provider will be history unless a new killer feature is developed which no other phone will have.

OK, used AT&T years ago, and for six months when my company insisted. Service is terrible - not service i my house (except when virtually hangin out of my office window), no service in virtually all of North Princeton. This has little to do with data load - we're talking at all hours, and we're talkign phone service.

Second, I don't get this "the largest 3G network". I have 8830 BBerry, thankfully, back on Verizon (much, much, much, much better service). On AT&T BBerry 8820 not 3G, Curve not 3G, 8110 not 3G. Only the recetly released $300 Bold. So they've got the worlds largest 3G network. But did we forget to mention, while Verizons typical corporate Blackberries are 3G, nothign but like the two most expensive phones we have, the Bold and the IPhone, which you have no chance of your company providing, are the only two phones that someone would want with 3G..???

Hated AT&T well before they got the iPhone, which is the one and only reason I have to do without one.

And ....... I know I am very far from the sole person who holds that belief. I refuse to deal with any company with a "customer service" department which is staffed with liars and rude morons.

iPhone deal seems to be AT&T's opening of Pandora's box. The root of the problem is that the telecom industry (at least in US) is just catching up to the the reality of a data driven mobile business. Voice is still the cash cow (no wonder VOIP apps are a no-no) & most operational efforts so far were geared towards fixing dropped calls & improving voice quality. Popularity of iphone is the game changer for AT&T, pushing them to focus equally on the data side. Let's hope that this will lead us to true mobile internet in the near future.

Please correct your statement about "truly global 3G".

In Europe such bands (1900/850) aren't assigned for cellular operation.

Any GSM phone, regardless of the carrier, that supports multiple bands (US' 1900/850 or Europe's 1800/900) can be flagged as "truly global". The rest is just roaming agreements (unless you count that AT&T has agreements with 2 carriers in Tajikistan while TMO has an agreement with 1).

So, that means the T-Mobile USA, Rogers Canada and other smaller GSM operators are also "truly global".

AT&T built their own coffin, let them be buried in it.

There are plenty of smartphones out there that use a lot of data bandwidth, and you don't see anyone blaming them for sucking up the data capacity of the network. I'm no Apple fan, but they certainly have a lot more foresight than AT&T has ever shown in the entire history of the company. If it weren't for a long period of monopoly the company would have never risen to its former position, and we'd have been rid of it a long time ago.

Well now, I've had AT&T for years and years. My calls sound fine, don't get dropped and the service is great even in my cabin in the woods in northern Michigan. But then, I don't have an iPhone. I have had two of the HTC offerings that AT&T puts their name on. They work great. Maybe it's NOT AT&T and it's actually the iPhone itself that's crappy? Oh wait, how can that be it's an Apple product it HAS to be wonderful...

This is a moot argument to an extent even greater than what-if scenarios usually are. I believe that Verizon did not contend for the rights to market the i-Phone because it foresaw the impact it would have on network reliability. It has always been Verizon's policy to offer a more primitive lineup of phones precisely so as to keep the strain on its network within its design limits. They are dedicated to providing reliable PHONE service as their paramount purpose, business data of next highest importance, and correctly view the bandwidth-hogging games and other gee-gaws at which the i-Phone excels as a tertiary, even tangential purpose.

So what you're really asking is, "If Verizon did not place telephonic reliability above other considerations, would their telephonic reliability suffer?" The answer to this question is "Of course, but so what?"

There are a lot of perfectly valid things to carp at Verizon about, but their priorities at providing reliable cellular telephone service is not among them, in my opinion.

But still - AT&T was a different company, still "Ma Bell" before it was bought by Cingular (a.k.a. SW Bell).

Service used to be excellent - esp. for partner companies (one of which I used to work for).

Now, they think they can just treat the customer like dirt and they over-charge people all the time - I got charged over $1000 for data roaming in a place I never went - and, as stated multiple times, the data service is now pretty slow.

Hopefully someday, we'll see more systems like WiMAX which are packet-based and QoS-moderated, and many of these problems will be lessened.

Well, one can always dream...

Why do I hate AT&T? Let me count the ways...

Honestly, AT&T was hated with a passion long before they ever got the iPhone.

Some highlights:
Just over 2 years ago, we signed a new contract. They have yet to honor it.
Shortly after that problem started, we discovered that they had been charging us for some other company's phone lines for about the last decade, in addition to charging that company.
They are so massive and bloated that the different departments often can't work with each other, sometimes don't know of each others' existence or function, and most of the time won't talk to each other, leading to mass confusion as to which one is supposed to be doing various things; it's a nightmare, and even some of their employees will tell you so when you call to get information.
I had to threaten to sue them for harassment to get them to stop calling to sell me long distance service. I had to re-emphasize this when they bought my local bell carrier.

So, yes, we'd absolutely still hate AT&T, even if the iPhone or any other bandwidth hog, had never been invented.

^-.-^