I hope Verizon knows that unlimited data is what is keeping most of their customers with them. It is kind of the only advantage they have for me.
Verizons EvDO covers allot more people than AT&T's HSPA fact. How verizons EvDO compares speed wise/ect. to AT&T's HSPA in general and specific areas is what ill get to below...
The way my Verizon 3G was so unusable yesterday, I wouldn't want to grandfather 3G. My AT&T 3G was fine yesterday, but Verizon's 3G is worse than Edge. I think Verizon should grandfather unlimited data when upgrading to 4G LTE, because when you're in a area that doesn't a 4G LTE signal... we will still have to deal with Verizon's slow 3G.
I still find it funny how it took tell the iPhone 4 to come out on verizon for people to REALLY understand how slow EvDO is in comparison to AT&T's HSPA. It seams like no one complained about EvDO rarely going over 1.5MB/s until the iPhone 4 went CDMA2000. AT&T vs Verizon:
---AT&T HSPA 3G
+High speed 3G that will be able to keep up with LTE.
+World wide handset compatibilty for the most part (do not feel like explaining frequency bands)
-Not as wide spread deployed as EvDO (EvDO was a software upgrade while HSPA/UMTS was hardware thus making it much more difficult to deploy, see every European GSM carrier for proof though they did act earlier and quicker).
-AT&T had some backhaul issues thus causing dropped calls and inconsistant data rates in the past but from what I've seen from
actual users (ie: not your idiot friends who know nothing past competitive commercials and word of mouth) this has massively improved.
---Verizon EvDO 3G
+Widely deployed. Enough said, if there is 1xRTT (2G) service there is most likely EvDO (3G) service and if there isn't the next tower probably does have it. EvDO is pretty common place and you don't see verizon users wondering if they have 3G as much as AT&T users do.
+CDMA2000 holds a signal very well even when down to a bad signal however data rates suffer.
-EvDO unless in perfect conditions just does not get much over 1.5MB/s. In fact if I had the option I would most likely be on AT&T because I can deal with decent EDGE vs bad EvDO because the second EvDO drops from perfect to decent its give or take a little fast than EDGE.
-No handset compatibility. Have fun roaming anywhere but Mexico and Canada and a few other places CDMA2000 is not really a world standard and there is no option to buy a prepaid SIM card overseas and use it in your CDMA2000 iPhone 4.
I think 4G LTE should not be effecting pricing of data plans. Currently we pay for
data service
not 3G service so that means regardless of whether your on 1xRTT or EvDO on verizon your paying $30 a month for unlimited and regardless of whether your on nothing, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS with AT&T your paying 15 or 25 dollars a month for one of their plans. I think its important we understand these concepts before we start talking about future plans as well as attempt to understand carriers concepts.
