“Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg said in an interview that such a pricing change would be made possible by the carrier’s migration to a fourth-generation, or 4G, network. The network, which promises higher top speeds, will be available in 38 cities by year end. Mr. Seidenberg said, however, the carrier hasn’t committed to any plans yet,” Cheng and Raice report. “U.S. carriers are beginning to tinker with the limits of how many websites, videos and songs a person can download each month on their cellphone. But Verizon is considering another option: delivering faster data speeds at premium prices.”
“Mr. Seidenberg is expected to unveil a number of such 4G devices at the Consumer Electronic Show in January, and said he expects the first phone to come out in February, ahead of the company’s prior target of the first half of the year,” Cheng and Shayndi Raice report. “He added the company has been pushing hard to accelerate the development of products, and said there would be more 4G devices in the market than expected.”
Cheng and Shayndi Raice report, “Mr. Seidenberg said his embrace of LTE has drawn the interest of Apple Inc., and helped Verizon get the iPad. But he didn’t comment on when Verizon might get the iPhone. ‘If the iPhone comes to us, it’s because Apple thinks it’s time,’ he said. ‘Our interests are beginning to come together more but they have to take steps to align their technology with ours.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let the “4G iPhone 5 due in February” rumors commence!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
Find new ways to bilk customers.
nickel and dime CO.
They’re all doing it. AT&T is no different.
I bet the overall quality of Walmart and Sam’s club customers is the reason why they were able to get the iPad too.
Oh yes, because of LTE they got the iPad. It’s not like they got an exclusive deal or anything, or apple changed the guts to make it work with verizon.
This is a negotiation ploy and put pressure on Apple to cave in to “align their technology in line with theirs”.
Oh at least they are honest that they are looking for the best financial way to screw the customer over.
The Government should file for an injunction for telcos that state they have 4G service. No carrier in the US has 4G and won’t have for several years in all likelihood. Even LTE which Verizon and AT&T is moving to has the capability of being 4G but the speeds max will not exist in the US for quite a while.
Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are all referring to their present or “in-the-near-future” all call it 4G. Only AT&T correctly calls their new HSPA+ service 3G. T-Mobile has the exact same service and calls it 4G and HSPA+ will never be 4G.
What has happened to Truth in Advertising???
My friend of mine just told me yesterday how his wife somehow rang up over $300 in phone bills last month because she can’t control her usage and call when it’s free, like nights, weekends and in network.
Cell phones are scams like credit and debit cards, you go into them thinking you can control them and your behavior consistently all the time, but find out you can’t.
Of course the teleco’s don’t put a nice constant reminder on the screen how many minutes one has left for the month so one can control their usage, why should they when they want you to go over?
What we really need is a new technology that makes ugly, expensive cell phone towers obsolete. With plenty of cheap and numerous mini-towers everywhere will open up a lot of bandwidth, thus stop this insane madness.
I’ve got this awful feeling like I’m going to f*%@#d out of the iPhone a second time.
The reason I can’t get one now is that I have no AT&T coverage. If an LTE only iPhone were released, I may not be able to get one again since I’m not in one of the blessed 38 cities with Verizon 4G.
Does anybody know if these LTE devices are backward compatible with CDMA?
No one should be surprised that telcos are looking at new pricing models. They have a highly capitalized service that they have to monetize. I think it is foolish, however, for these guys to publically mull over their options. Figure out what it is you want to sell me, tell me what it will cost, and I will decide to buy it or not.
…”They’re all doing it. AT&T is no different.
That may be true, but there is a major difference here. Verizon is an undisputed champion of the world in nickel-and-diming their customers. No other carrier forces handset makers to disable the USB side-loading of your own music, MIDI (ringtones), pictures and videos. On many Verizon phones, you can’t even copy pictures you took yourself from your phone back to your computer — Verizon will charge you for that feature!
There is no dispute here that all carriers are trying to squeeze every cent they possibly can from their customers, but Verizon is in a whole new category when it comes to that. Their creativity in ways to do this is unparalleled in the world.
And so it begins. For the past several years, the hue and cry over iPhone/ATT exclusivity has been deafening . . . and worse. “If only T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc., etc., etc., were available, we’d all be SO happy!
Yeah, right. Just wait, Verizon folks. Just wait. This ain’t gonna be pretty.
please the current carriers 3G doesnt even go at its top speeds at all they bearly hit what should be their low spees i have 3megs per second “high speed” dsl in nyc and its faster than my 3G that should be hitting 1meg per sec i dont see any of this at all. look at this, the 3G service that GSM carriers AT&T and T-Mobile plan to roll out for its subscribers. UMTS boasts speeds of up to 2Mbps, although users will typically see speeds in the 300Kbps-to-400Kbps range; so if we cant even hit the top of 3G y are we in a rush to bring 4G so that it seems as if its doing what 3G should have been doing all along?
Verizon.
Getting the iPhone since 2006.
Any phone that comes out for Verizon in at least the next 3 years will need to be CDMA too. They can’t sell phones that are LTE only.
This is great, now I won’t have to wait until July to ipgrade my iPhone 3G! I haven’t ipgraded to OS4 yet and will bide my time now until iPhone 5!
Let me get this straight. No one actually has
true 4G at this time. Verizon has LTE which
they advertise as 4G. LTE means Long-Term
Evolution. So LTE is a fetus or just born baby
that might grow up (from 1mg to 12 mg) to be
a true 4G? Advertising BS, doublespeak.
LTE is totally unrelated and, therefore, not backward compatible to CDMA. Sure Verizon can have LTE-only phones and would be better to have CDMA phones to satisfy those outside LTE range. And with the Android-crap phones, there will be plenty of them to go around.
It could be the same for AT&T, but because the 3G world standard is GSM, an LTE/GSM combo-chip phone makes far more sense.
Just seems right to me. My water is billed for how much I use, my phone, gasoline, even the food I eat. So why should Internet be any different. Is there some law that would force companies to all you can eat, smoke, drink or use programs? Don’t like it, don’t use it. Build your own Verizon and give away the service. No one is stopping you.
Why am I not surprised that Verizon is trying to find a way to charge more for speed? Sprint doesn’t seem to have that issue.
Yes. 4G has finally been defined as having top download speeds of at least 100 Mbits/sec. Not only are there no phones available at this speed, bit in the US, we don’t have the true capability of reaching this peak speed.
So, 4G has become telco-speak for the next natural progression after 3G. When Sprint went to WIMAX, they called it 4G just as Verizon has called LTE 4G and T-Mobile calls HSPA+ 4G.
AT&T also has HSPA+ reaching 80 percent of its subscribers, but still refers to it correctly as 3G. Just as EDGE was referred to as 2.5G (unofficially), HSPA+ might, at best, be referred to as 3.5G.
HSPA+ will never hit the 4G top speed, but LTE, one day, will. With this new band width auction coming up, 100 Mbits/sec will be easily attainable and far surpassed into whatever the ITU-R decides to define 5G.
We should see real 4G phones and service by the end of 2012 or early 2013. By the way, right now HSPA+ is limited to 7.2 Mbits/sec. with potential of 14+ Mbits/sec. we may see this, but with the development and startup of LTE by Verizon and now AT&T, it would not surprise me that they will hit 14+ ‘bits/sec. for those customers unable to get LTE.
Cell phone data plans are already overpriced. If they want to tier the speed, the prices should start where they are, and move down for the lower tiers. Definitely not up.
@HughB,
Does the water company charge you for the flow rate as well as the amount of water used? That is what Verizon is looking at. Should you be charged more for a shower than just washing your hands just because the pressure is greater, in addition to how much water each act uses?
I despise Verizon- I wish Sprint would get the iPhone. And Consumer Reports would get a brain transplant.