Verizon Gets the iPhone: Just the Facts
During a press conference in New York earlier today, Verizon announced that it will start carrying Apple’s iPhone 4 next month. Thanks to the capabilities of Verizon’s network, Apple is allowing the company to offer a few exclusive features, including the ability to use the iPhone as a WiFi hotspot for up to 5 people. As usual, Apple is conservative in its technology choices, though, and the phone won’t run on Verizon’s advanced LTE network. As of now, we don’t know anything about the rates and data plans Verizon will offer for the iPhone.
Here are the cold hard facts about the announcement:
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- The iPhone 4 will be available on Verizon 2/10/11
- pre-order for existing Verizon customers starts 2/3/11. New customers can oder online starting 2/10/11
- Verizon’s website for more info about the iPhone
- prices will be same as on AT&T with a new 2 year contract: $199.99 for 16GB and $299.99 for 32GB
- mobile hotspot feature will be available
- no comments about pricing for data plans and optional features like tethering/mobile hotspot
- no support for LTE yet (as it’s a standard CDMA device, you won’t be able to make phone calls and use data at the same time and incoming calls will interrupt your data stream) – neither Verizon nor Apple would comment about plans for an LTE-enabled device
- the Verizon iPhone will have a CDMA-specific antenna design
- Verizon thinks the quality of its network will allow it to stand out in the competition with AT&T, something the company’s CEO Lowell Macadam pointed out a few times during the press conference. At one point, he called Verizon’s LTE network a 6G network: “With all the renaming of networks and technologies, we thought about naming ours 6G, but that’s not really our style, so we’ll stick with 4G.” The iPhone won’t run on this network, though.
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