Credit Suisse released a report Monday that said that 23% (an estimated 1.4 million) AT&T customers would switch if Verizon released an iPhone next year, as is widely anticipated. A very slim margin (3%) said they’d go so far as to break their AT&T contract and pay the penalties. Most said they’d just switch at the first opportunity.
Personally, I’m going to take a “wait and see” attitude, assuming this even does come to pass.
All in all, I do sincerely believe that Verizon has a better network. That said, there are two interesting little factors that keep me on the sidelines in this whole situation:
* First and foremost, is the issue of network saturation. While I believe that Verizon traditionally has had a better network, I have to acknowledge that the iPhone brought a crushload of data usage and new customer traffic that was previously unseen. In other words, AT&T had no clue what they were getting themselves into. I firmly believe that if Verizon had done the deal (it’s widely reported that Apple went to Verizon first and Verizon wasn’t willing to give Apple what it wanted, so Apple shopped their deal to AT&T next…), that we’d all be sitting here complaining loudly about Verizon and hoping that AT&T would be getting the phone soon! So if 1.4 million users jump ship, not to mention a whole crushload of existing Verizon users make a move from other phones over to the iPhone, we could see Verizon getting slammed. The odds of that happening are admitted less now that they have the hindsight experience of watching AT&T’s debacle. If Verizon does get a black eye in any of this, it’s their own fault! But the possibility still exists for a greater-than-expected turnout, and some network problems down the road. Not to mention the lighter load on AT&T once 1.4 million heavy data users are off of its network.
* I hate (yes, that’s underscored and bolded for a reason!) the way Verizon has to OEM-ize all of the phones on their networks. They disable cool features that are normally accessible elsewhere, and install silly VCast junk on the phones, etc. I want to see if Apple stands up to them and keeps a “normal” phone, or if the Verizon-based iPhone is somehow hobbled or Verizon-ized before I’d make any decisions.
So all in all, I’m VERY interested to see how this unfolds. But I’m in no hurry to jump ship. While I screamed as loudly as the next person originally, I must admit that AT&T’s purported $4 billion-plus network buildout really has helped solve a lot of the initial problems, their hundreds of new cell towers have helped, etc. It’s not perfect, but the service as improved to where it’s definitely satisfactory. And thus, I’ll take the “one in hand is worth 2 in the bush” stance and wait to see how things pan out with a Verizon-powered device before jumping ship.
