AT&T may be screwed. My company phone is on their network while my personal phone is on Verizon. The two don't even come close to comparing equally, and I go a LOT of places in any given week.
Fixed that for you. If you want some tragically humorous reading some time, look at the strategic business decisions AT&T has made in the last decade or two. I'm too lazy to dig them up, but a good example is that they spent millions and millions of dollars, building a broadband cable network--only to sell it shortly after getting it established. The very next thing they did was dump millions and millions into offering VOIP service. That would've been a good plan, unfortunately they didn't have a broadband network to deliver it over at that point because, you know, they JUST SOLD IT. So all they did was come up with something that cannibalized their existing market in a way that they couldn't possibly profit from. After a year or two they quietly got out of VOIP, getting stomped by upstart Vonage. Around the same time they sold off the cell phone network they'd just built to Cingular, shortly before going bankrupt. Then, for whatever bewildering reason, someone decided AT&T was a valuable brand and decided to buy it and rename Cingular AT&T. I mean, you're hard pressed to waste more money on stupid decisions than General Motors, but AT&T sure tries.
I'm having to review my options, but being able to use the internet and talk on the phone at the same time may be a deal breaker. I routinely send e-mails, texts, and update Facebook and Twitter while I'm on the phone.
As soon as an LTE iPhone comes out, you'll be able to do both. We might see one this year when the iPhone 5 comes out.
I'm not sure if it does either. I'll let you know after I upgrade my phone to the Bionic in a few months.
But will that only be an option if I'm actually on the LTE portion of the network? I'm willing to bet it'll be more than a day or two before it gets here, which means diddly to me.
Here's their 4G rollout map. They plan to have the whole country covered by 2013, but IIRC, they're actually ahead of schedule in some places.
LTE, IIRC, does allow data and voice simultaneously. It's just the existing CDMA network which doesn't.
Roll out will be a hell of a lot faster and have more coverage than anything that AT&T could do. You'd probably have to wait till 2012 though.
I already get up to 8mbps from HSPA. Verizon's LTE will give you up to 12mbps. At both of those speeds, the processing power of the phone is the weak link. I can hook a 20mbps FIOS connection up to a 486 and it's still going to take 30 seconds to load a web page. To cut to the point, I can talk and surf now. Or, I can switch to Verizon and talk an surf in two years. I assure you rural Alabama isn't on the top fo the list.
[Bill Clinton] It depends upon what your definition of "4G" is. [/BC] All carriers are upgrading to what they call 4G, but almost none of it will reach the levels set by the official standards committee in the near term. Verizon's will, IIRC, be the fastest, with T-Mobile being the slowest.
Eh, there is room for debate due to the fact that no one is really following standards. AT&T is upgrading to what is really "3.5G". HSPA to HSPA+. However they will have the best coverage of high speed by the time this is done - it will bring a lot of 2G areas up to the latest standards. They're simultaneously deploying hardware for later standards that they literally will bring online with firmware upgrades. Verizon can't do the easy upgrades AT&T can and is pushing harder with complete new installs. T-Mobile is actually going to be the fastest in areas they have coverage. In areas they have coverage. In areas they have coverage.
What Verizon needs to do is exert some negative price pressure on AT&T. An unlimited everything plan for $99/mo. that applies to the iPhone would do the trick quite nicely. They have it for thier other phones, so why not?
Why would they do that though? They have a phone people are happy to buy at the current price point. All a price war does is end with industries being broke. There is a different between being competitive and being ruthless. There is no point being a monopoly; you'll get shut down.
