Verizon Targets AT&T's Network With 'There's a Map For That' Campaign

[Rodimus Prime]

My original iPhone was not subsidized and I had to buy it at full price. I chose the device with no qualms about what network I was required to use.

While the iPhone is now subsidized, so are many other phones on many other networks. If only certain networks were doing this to add value to choosing their contracts, I could understand your point of choosing the network before the device. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't understand how this changes my argument that the service is just a commodity while the device is the consumer's primary choice.

I think the biggest problem is when Apple had the chance to change the game by not doing subizided cost they instead give in and just make it worse by forcing a much larger than average subsudize on there phone ($400 vs $250).

Unlock phones puts the network and the phone separete. But as long as it is lock in together it should be choose network first

i get what your sayin, but nah, they can still complain all they want... i dont think it says in the contract be expected to have 30% dropped calls.

people complain not only to relieve themselves, but to eventually get whats right. (complaining on macrumors isnt exactly the best way of going about it, ill give you that)

Well the people who choose the iPhone knowing service are spotty put the label on them as not smart.
Smart people look things over and choose what works best for them. For me I know service is the first thing I look at and that is how I got to ATT (Cingular at the time )for my phone and dump Verizon. Verizon service was crap where I was 6 months out of the year. Sprint and Cingular/ATT were king in that area. I used Sprint for a while and it was great. Switch to ATT because most of my friends and family were on it so M2M.

Either way I choose the service first then pick out the phones from there.

 

[MacFly123]

T-Mo may have screwed the pooch on their 3G rollout, but my phone doesn't drop 30% of my calls. It'll be interesting to see how ATT, and TMo keep up with the 3G coverage, as Verizon and Sprint move forward.

My iPhone never drops calls and hasnt since after the first few months the 3G luanched. But I am not in New York or California!

I did have a hard time sending MMS the week it launched. Lots of sending errors. And tethering...... how about that AT&T?

I want another US carrier to get the iPhone, if for no other reasons than to just spur competition and get a big load off of the AT&T network.

 

[iksretep]

i'm not sure...

...where everyone lives, and I must be one of the few lucky ones, but I have minimal interruptions when it comes to calls, data, and other AT&T services. With honesty I can count on my fingers how many times I had my calls dropped... and out of the hundreds of calls I make a month the number over the course of a 6 month period is so minuscule that it is not even worth mentioning.

I switched to an iphone (was already an AT&T customer) the day it first came out (yes I was the loser waiting in line on day one), and painfully paid the upgrade price for every subsequent upgrade to both 3G and 3GS (upgraded my personal phone to 3GS this week)

I live in the Los Angeles area and have not had any problems with dropped calls... I do have data access issues when driving outside of Los Angeles, but I usually don't drive and read emails

I will not make AT&T all good... upgrade pricing is horrible , their billing is horrible , the price for their services is high in comparison to other providers, their customer service is also a bit retarded (sorry) however coverage is something I have been lucky with ...

 

[aristobrat]

I think the biggest problem is when Apple had the chance to change the game by not doing subizided cost they instead give in and just make it worse by forcing a much larger than average subsudize on there phone ($400 vs $250).

Unlock phones puts the network and the phone separete.

I'm not sure why you think Apple's original iPhone sales model was changing the game.

The customer paid the full price of the iPhone, the iPhone was still locked to a specific carrier, and the carrier agreed to pay Apple monthly for every iPhone customer they had.

On top of that, AT&T created a special, cheaper data plan to lure customers in, as the full-priced phone was very off-putting to some.

Sounds like the original iPhone ended up costing AT&T more than the subsidy on the iPhone 3G/3GS did.

And why did Apple change its original sales model? Because they weren't selling nearly as fast as Apple had hoped.

I agree with you that being able to buy any phone and have it work on any network would be awesome. Logistically, I just don't ever see it happening.

 

[MacToddB]

Getting back to the actual advertisement. What self-respecting advertising professional would use someone else's tagline like that.

I had a few friends watching the football game (where we saw the ad) and half of them thought it was an iphone commercial because they were only half paying attention and heard "there's a map for that".

Pretty shoddy work in my opinion.

Seems like it worked. Got a lot of people talking about it, razzing on AT&T and saying good for them (Verizon). On an Apple forum no less. Mission accomplished.

 

[iceman1234]

I spend at least 98% of my time in AT&T 3G coverage areas. While Verizon's coverage map may look impressive with their sea of red, they seem to be forgetting that dirt can't use 3G.

Yea I haven't been to half (ok 100%) the places were verizon 1-ups Att... Plus verizon turned off all the cell sites in my area so I was forced to leave Big Red!

 

[K3mp]

AT&T really needs to update their coverage map I have 3G where the map says I should barley have Edge. I do agree that the commercial is good in all BUT IN MY EXPERIENCE AT&T has always had great coverage where Verizon did not have any. The only time Verizon has had better coverage was during a Cat 4 and 5 Hurricane which I can live with.

 

[JBaker122586]

Getting back to the actual advertisement. What self-respecting advertising professional would use someone else's tagline like that.

I had a few friends watching the football game (where we saw the ad) and half of them thought it was an iphone commercial because they were only half paying attention and heard "there's a map for that".

Pretty shoddy work in my opinion.

As an advertising professional with no prior knowledge of this ad, I can tell you that this advertisement was almost certainly pushed by the client rather than the agency. Clients often obsess about responding to competitors' ads, even when it's not the best decision strategically or creatively.

 

[iphones4evry1]

Good !
I'm getting sick and tired of AT&T's decline in coverage and spotty coverage. When I had my RAZR phone, I used to have great coverage everywhere on AT&T, but over the past year AT&T's coverage and quality of coverage has declined BIG TIME. I'm sick and tired of it! I hope Verizon launches a HUGE campaign showing all the spots on the map where AT&T has lousy coverage and it motivates AT&T to get off their laurels and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[tempusfugit]

ATT is unbelievably good in Minneapolis, but my long drives to and from chicago are marked by a whole lot of EDGE which sucks!

 

[alexbates]

That has to be the best Verizon commercial ever! I am now really convinced that I should switch from AT&T.

 

[tscott467]

It's a really good Verizon commercial, but going back to the fact that AT&T has a better network than Verizon? No way. If you mean better by having an overall slower 3G network, dropped calls, booted of the network, and having horrible coverage? Yeah then it's better. Apple would do alot better on Verizon's network due to the fact that Verizon's network can handle the MMS, and 100,000 iPhones using the same network in a square mile. AT&T, can't. They were so worried that the MMS would be too much for their network.

I love Apple, but not AT&T.

 

[kdarling]

Isn't Verizon's 4G network going to be GSM?

Nope.

Verizon is overlaying their CDMA network with LTE, which is a totally new protocol that has to be backfitted to work with any older system.

Many GSM carriers had already chosen LTE as their 4G protocol. This is what confused casual observers. However, CDMA carriers are implementing it first and therefore defining many of the details.

Verizon will continue to use CDMA for voice, and for data for lesser powered devices, for many years to come.

LTE will mostly be used at first by Verizon as sort of a wireless FiOS. It's far more likely that we'll first see an LTE Apple tablet, than an LTE Apple phone. I'd love to see Apple come out with something that allows video calls. LTE would be perfect for that.

on another note if it is wouldn't their coverage also be spotty?

Verizon says they're moving up LTE deployment and want to hit all the major markets (100 million) almost all at once in 2010. So yes, it would be mostly cities until they finish up in late 2013.

But again, LTE probably wouldn't be wasted on voice or handhelds, not for a long while. Both CDMA and GSM carriers want to get their money's worth out of their original networks.

 

[carmenodie]

Seriously, what is it with verizon?! They didn't want they iphone b/c it came with features out the box that Apple wasn't going to cripple so verizon could charge their premiums for it(V Cast my a**). Now with so many defectors heading to at&t they
see now what the consumer wants and will go where ever the best deal is. Like it or hate it the iphone is a freaking hit. Home run out the park. Balco juiced or au natural the darn thing is the s***!!!
I have the 3GS and there ain't nothing out there like. NOTHING!!!!!!
Now if only Apple would put gaming controls on the touch. You'd see the psp and the pspgo retail for $19.99. You know I'm right. And don't forget the dual analog sticks. OH LAWD! Sony would just die.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Well if Verizon hadn't been so crazy to try to corn hole Apple over the features of the iPhone and cause Apple to walk from the discussions, it would be a nearly bankrupt AT&T with their nose pressed against the glass saying that the iPhone sucks...

Sure, I have issues with AT&T's service. Sure there are times when I use AT&T's name in vain. I swore more when I found out that my Verizon phone with bluetooth would have more features on someone elses cell phone network and that the 'brain drain' at Verizon ordered certain features removed from the phone on their network! Yeah, Verizon has ZERO room to talk. They coulda had the iPhone... Hah!

 

[LEStudios]

Wait, you mean that grass on the other side isn't actually greener it's just painted green?!?!?!

Welcome to the real world!

 

[x86isslow]

The device should now be the focus. The service should be an afterthought in the background.

that's called an iPod touch - not a phone

 

[Arcady]

I don't understand people who point a video camera at their TV and record it, then upload that video to YouTube. If they can figure out how to connect the camera to the computer, why can't they figure out how to connect the TV?

 

[kdarling]

Seriously, what is it with verizon?! They didn't want they iphone b/c it came with features out the box that Apple wasn't going to cripple so verizon could charge their premiums for it..

Well if Verizon hadn't been so crazy to try to corn hole Apple over the features of the iPhone and cause Apple to walk from the discussions, it would be a nearly bankrupt AT&T with their nose pressed against the glass saying that the iPhone sucks...

You might want to read articles like this one.

It was Apple that wanted extra control and money. And they didn't walk away for a very lonnng time. They spent a year, off and on, trying to get Verizon to agree to their terms.

There was no animosity. No fights. None of the fantasy drama you read about on fanboy sites.

Verizon almost certainly never even saw an iPhone. (Even ATT didn't until months later.) Perhaps if they had, things could've turned out differently.

 

[MacFan782040]

I have to say-- I was with Verizon for 4 years before getting the iPhone. I *knew* (meaning I told myself prior to) that getting the iPhone would mean worse service and coverage, but I bit the bullet and went with it anyway.

Having said that, AT&T has not been nearly as bad as I imagined. Hardly any dropped calls, and although coverage was a little better with Verizon, there are actually several places I get AT&T service now that I did not with Verizon. So it's pretty even I'd say.

The only issue I have sometimes is when I'm at like a sporting event or something in Philly I can sometimes not get service because of network overload.

 

[TripHop]

I Think Apple Will Make A Verizon Compatible iPhone For Next Summer

First, Apple must build an iPhone that will work on Verizon's CDMA network (iPhone is GSM & HPDA), OR Verizon must upgrade their network to handle GSM/HDMA. I don't thing either will ever happen.

The former or both has to happen by next summer because there's no way Apple is going to continue letting AT&T keep their iPhone exclusivity past next July. In other markets where iPhones are being sold by multiple carriers, the iPhone's market share is radically higher. The same thing will happen here as soon as all the carriers are allowed to sell them.

We're still at the beginning of this device's history. Imagine what it'll be like next Summer when there are 150,000 applications for the next version 4 iPhone with a dual core ARM processor running @ 1.6GHz with 64GB of RAM on board.

 

[CaryMacGuy]

I used to live in Ithaca, NY and drove 45 miles to work up to Seneca Falls, going through much wilderness and nothingness. Throughout the drive, with Verizon not only would I have coverage but I would have 3G coverage most of the way. With AT&T, no only did I not have 3G coverage (about 1 mile outside of Ithaca) but much of the drive, I had no coverage at all.

That is just one example. Part of me wants to cancel AT&T and use my iPhone as a standalone iPod Touch device.

 

[TraceyS/FL]

I haven't read the thread..... but i had my first Verizon issue on monday. In my area i couldn't make a call.... i finally when to the Verizon store to see what was up.

48 towers down.
36 towers up.

And a ever so wonderful saleslady that had the personality of a..... anyway, she was very rude about it. In fact, i told her, "Hey, drop the attitude, i'm a non-contract customer - don't make me want to walk elsewhere."

The analogy i used regarding her.... couldn't sell water to a fish. UGH.

It's been the only major issue with Verizon in the 15 years we've been with them really.... and it wouldn't have been as bad if my stupid Comcast internet had been functional. IT's been up and down since Saturday and i'm starting to lose it.

ANYWAY, the coverage map is the first thing i tell people to check when asking for input on a carrier. Then ask people you know how their coverage is where you live. It's the only thing that matters.....

 

[gamezealot]

Map is a load of BS

Too bad that Map is a load of BS... I live in Coral Springs FL, just north of Ft Lauderdale... Verizons map says there is 3g coverage there... In my house and anywhere around my house i get 1 bar.... 1 lowzy bar!!! I switched back to AT&T and whoa, 5 bars, full signal, all the time! I don't understand why people bitch about AT&T... No phone company is any better... They all suck... Pull your panties up and move on...

 

[kdarling]

Surprised this hasn't been noted here yet...

USAToday interviewed the Verizon Wireless CEO about their new Android partnership, and got an extra comment:

Meantime, (the CEO) says, the carrier is continuing to talk with Apple about bringing the iPhone to Verizon. McAdam says Verizon would love to have the device, anytime Apple is ready. "It's up to them to decide."

Until then, he says, the two companies are having "lots of discussions" about Verizon's network and how it might affect Apple.

Real, or just pushing ATT's buttons so they have to pay Apple more? Who knows.