Aug 25 2011
Verizon Cell Phones Wildly Popular After All These Years
You think there’s nothing more to say about Verizon cell phones? Well, think again, because Apple’s in da house and its iPhone is changing the catalog in more ways than one!
No, this isn’t an advertisement – and it isn’t an advertorial, either – but one observer’s take on industry goings-on, an observer who isn’t even much of a cell phone consumer, really. It isn’t that I have some Verizon cell phones myself, say. In fact, I don’t really own a mobile handset at all. Not really, unless you count the one belonging to my live-in girlfriend of two and a half years. (Which is how I make contact with the outside world!)
I’m no Luddite, mind you; I was fascinated by mobile phones the same as anyone else ever since their general introduction to the public back in the early ’90s. At the time, things were radically different – and the same as ever in other respects. Know that old French saying? “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
So, changes: the stock of Verizon cell phones is much better than before, with more features than ever across a range of makes and models. But what’s remained the same are subscription plans that try to tie you down with all sorts of penalties for leaving early – and these plans want at least a year from you, if not more, still.
That’s where the iPhone figures into all this. It could be something of a catalyst, a game-changer. Whereas it was once offered exclusively for use over AT&T’s network, it’s now come to roost just as comfortably across Verizon’s own nationwide network.
Namely, greater competition.
And that often results in better terms and conditions.
Usually, that is. Presently, things have been pretty much the same. Whether it’s from Verizon or AT&T, consumer can expect about the same policies as well as prices. For instance, with both companies the iPhone can only be had through an onerous year(s)-long contract.
So just how is that “rockin’ the industry?”
Well, again, there’s the theory, and then there’s practice. Right now, though the industry is generally a fast-changing one with product cycles in the months if not in the weeks, market forces are still such that the carriers control most of how things work, what policies consumers get. But that can still change, as well it should – and there are those who claim that it’s actually begun to already.