Alex Stone

Every. single. year. the same Verizon iPhone rumors surface and it’s like no one recalls the same “verified rumors” from the previous year.

The only thing that makes me highly skeptical of any of the Verizon iPhone rumors, is that Verizon still runs on CDMA, meaning that a Verizon iPhone would be useless in a year or so when everyone finally switches to their LTE networks.

Not only that, but the current network would heavily degrade the iPhone’s user experience. Being able to talk and use server-centric apps is kind of a major selling point of the iPhone. I don’t think I’ve ever been on the phone and not been multi-tasking at the same time. Checking Facebook, posting to Twitter, or looking up movie times, restaurants, directions, flight schedules, Wikipedia entries, etc.

That’s not just me, either. I don’t know anyone who has an iPhone that doesn’t do the same thing when on a call, especially when calling a business or customer service line.

Finally, the other reason Apple is waiting for that LTE network is that unless Verizon has been upgrading their network in secret over the last few years, there’s no way they’ll be able to handle the load of Verizon users itching for an iPhone. AT&T has about 20k customers, probably about 70% of those users on iPhones all pulling roughly 1-5GB of mobile data every month per user. You think Verizon’s network is ready to handle that much data being pushed around.

AT&T wasn’t ready for the iPhone and has managed to step it up and roll out more hotspots and 3G towers over the last 3 years. Verizon has not. Granted, they’ve been hard at work getting ready to roll out LTE, but that’s not going to happen until next year and you won’t see it in your area until late-2011 or or 2012.

That being said, when Verizon rolls out their LTE network, then, and only then, would I put any weight behind a rumor of a Verizon iPhone.

UPDATE: I’m not saying a new iPhone isn’t coming out this year. That’s almost definitely happening, as Apple has released a new handset every single year about the same time, in addition to an iPhone OS update. I’m just saying that it’s not likely we’ll see a Verizon-enabled handset.