Verizon brings the iPhone 4 to market at a time when AT&T already has the iPhone 4 on the market. It’s good news for those Verizon customers who have always had interest in the iPhone but haven’t been willing to leave Verizon just to use one. But in the best case scenario, the Verizon iPhone is good news to all current an future iPhone users in the U.S., regardless of which carrier has their loyalties – and good news for U.S. smartphone users in general.
It’s not this way everywhere in the world, but the United States smartphone market is very much segmented by carrier-specific deals and even carrier-specific phones, such that if you want a particular smartphone, you may well have to move to a particular carrier just to get it. The iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and even the BlackBerry Torch have all been AT&T-only. The Droid phones? You’d better hope you’re a Verizon customer. Like the EVO? Have fun with Sprint. There are a number of smartphones that have been available on more than one U.S. carrier simultaneously, but it’s far from the norm; often, a change in smartphone preference requires a change in carriers.
In addition to forcing U.S. consumers to often switch to a carrier which doesn’t have the best signal in their area or doesn’t have a desirable billing plan, the frequency with which smartphones have been exclusively paired up with carriers has had another, perhaps even dimmer effect: with a lack of choices comes a lack of competition, meaning that U.S. carriers can pretty much do whatever they want to customers who strongly prefer to use a particular phone.
iPhone users have seen the brunt of this over the years: AT&T has routinely treated iPhone users like hostages, knowing that they’re not about to leave the iPhone platform under almost any circumstances, and accordingly giving them the worst of treatment. Features like MMS and tethering didn’t launch even after Apple had signed off on them, because AT&T couldn’t be bothered. Most iPhone users in the U.S. have no idea whether they’re on a 12 or 18 month upgrade pricing cycle until they look it up, and even then can’t get a straight answer as to why. And the overabundance of iPhones at major events often causes an AT&T network meltdown, even at events in which AT&T is a visible sponsor. But AT&T knows that most iPhone users consider their phone to be by far the most suitable option (many mainstream iPhone users consider the iPhone to be the only mainstream-suitable option), and so as long as iPhone users have been stuck with AT&T as their only option, AT&T has been able to take full advantage of them.
Similar horror stories, of course, come from every carrier-specific smartphone from every U.S. carrier. And of course, carrier-specificity is not required for horror stories to arise. Part of it is that U.S. carriers are only regulated on a fractional level compared to the way in which some overseas governments clamp down on their carriers. But the other part of it is that as long as a U.S. carrier knows that users of a certain smartphone aren’t likely to change phones based on a bad carrier experience, they’re more than willing to give them a bad carrier experience in the name of their own bottom line. But with the iPhone now set to be available on the nation’s two biggest carriers simultaneously, well, this just change everything. After all, those buying their first iPhone can now choose whether to get it from Verizon or AT&T, and even those already on an iPhone can choose to bolt to the other side as soon as their current contract expires.
So what might this newfound competition mean for iPhone users? Let’s say Verizon tries to make a splash by offering current iPhone users who switch over from AT&T (when their contract is up) some kind of bonus, such as free tethering or extra text messages, or even just cheaper monthly pricing plans. This in turn could cause AT&T, whose attitude toward iPhone users has long been comatose at best, to wake up and offer something to counter the possible defection (making good on that laughable “more bars in more places” claim might be a good start). Now you’ve almost got a bidding war for iPhone users’ business, as the nation’s two big carriers fight for a slice of the same pie.
There’s no guarantee it’ll happen. U.S. carriers have long seemingly been in collusion when it comes to questionable tactics such as massively overcharging for text messages (which cost the carriers almost literally nothing) along with outright billing fraud which they merely get slapped on the wrist for years later. But if the best case scenario holds true, and Verizon and AT&T actually start competing with each other for iPhone business, this could be great news not only for iPhone users but for everyone else. Better iPhone pricing and service would then put pressure on the rest of the industry to do the same for other phones, and who knows, perhaps U.S. cellular carriers could even cease being the laughingstock of the civilized world.
Perhaps that last part might be too much to expect, short of actual governmental regulation of U.S. cellular carriers finally going into effect instead of the pretend-rules they’ve always played by. But at the least, the arrival of a Verizon iPhone 4, while the AT&T iPhone 4 still remains, gives U.S. consumers some hope of gaining leverage against the carriers, whereas up until now there has been none.