Recently the reports of Verizon iPhone 4G release have really taken a flight first with Digitimes report claiming that the CDMA Apple iPhone is already under development and will be out by fourth quarter of the year, then with Verizon executive Michael Maiorana saying in an interview that CDMA iPhone is inevitable and Verizon iPhone is not a matter of if but more a matter of when, and finally with the news that Verizon is ready to start user trials of its 4G LTE network.
If there is any truth in the reports then Verizon iPhone release should not be that far away in future. So let’s wait and watch.
Meanwhile as Verizon moves to faster fourth-generation network technology, it is likely to follow AT&T Inc. in eliminating unlimited data plans and introducing tiered pricing this year. “We will probably need to change the design of our pricing where it will not be totally unlimited, flat rate,” John Killian, chief financial officer of Verizon Communications Inc., said in an interview with Bloomberg.
This decision to change to tiered pricing by AT&T and now possibly by Verizon stems from the load and stress the network has to face as smartphones offer more storage, video chat capability among others. Besides, ability to shoot high-definition videos and photos, uploading files to YouTube and Flickr have increased the burden on the network. “It was unsustainable,” says Chetan Sharma, who runs a consulting firm focusing on telecom issues. “It couldn’t have gone on forever.”
Moreover, with the introduction of iPhone in 2007, users spend more time surfing on the phones, playing with apps, watching YouTube clips, and thus strain the network’s capacity. According to Sharma, an average iPhone consumer uses about 600 MB a month. Therefore, unless measures to restrain the data use are taken, data consumption will only go up. As a result, AT&T introduced tiered pricing where its users now pay $15 a month for 200 MB, or $25 a month for $2GB, instead of a flat monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data. Currently, Verizon hasn’t announced when it plans to introduce new data pricing plans.