My first “mobile” phone was a bag phone on Verizon system, that I got through a company program. We had a female employee murdered on the job, as one of the steps that the company took to prevent this happening again was to set up a group phone plan that allowed employees to be in a group plan to get a bag phone. In those days in order to afford a mobile phone, (and they were mostly all bag phones) you had to belong to a group plan, and the company went with Verizon because they got the best deal for us from them. Because I started my mobile phone life with Verizon I stayed with them until I got my first iPhone (a 3G if I remember correctly). I kept the bag phone for quite a while because in the early days the cellphone towers were far apart, and the bag phone had the power to pull in a very weak signal.
I had to switch to AT&T in order to get an iPhone because in the early days they had exclusive rights to carry them. I believe the iPhone 4 was the first model that was sold by someone other than AT&T, when Verizon and Sprint started carrying the CDMA version of the phone. One of the reasons I had no problems about abandoning Verizon, other than I wanted an iPhone, was that I felt they were nickel and dimeing you to death—all their plans needed another $5.00 to $20.00 a month to step up to the next level program, which you needed to do to get a usable phone.
I’ve never had a problem with AT&T that we couldn’t work out, so I’m still with them.
