Verizon thumps chest after AT&T's subscriber gains

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Verizon Wireless added 1.1 million subscribers in the second quarter, the company said Friday.

The timing of the news is odd given that Verizon reports earnings on Monday. This news couldn't wait a few more days?

Apparently not. After all, AT&T's second quarter highlighted 1.4 million subscriber gains, with a major boost from the release of the iPhone 3GS in mid-June.

Verizon Wireless also noted that it had 87.7 million customers at the end of the quarter. AT&T said it had 79.6 million.

File this statement in the hearing footsteps category. Verizon Wireless wants to make it real clear it's still the biggest dog in the U.S. wireless carrier game--even if it's got AT&T's exclusive deal with the iPhone to contend with.

Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless held back the number I really want to know--churn. AT&T's churn was impressive at 1.09 percent in the second quarter. In any case, a little gamesmanship on Friday is good entertainment.

[SwissJay]

I will never use a company that dongles their products beyond recognition or doesn't use GSM technology. Verizon, Sprint, etc.: yuck! Don't even allow you to bluetooth between friends.

[Spartan_458]

I have no problem with GSM, I just hate AT&T. Service is terrible. I'd take Verizon any day over AT&T.

[dreidogg]

I don't care if Sprint or Verizon use 2 cans and a piece of rope, their networks run rings around AT&T's network. I love my iPhone but AT&T service sucks and blows like a shop vac and I never had network problems with Sprint or Verizon. My phone is a phone first and all the Bluetooth, GSM and other technology really doesn't matter if I can't keep a conversation going because of dropped calls.

[alegr]

GSM? You mean that horrible technology that uses high-powered pulses that cause the sound devices around it to produce weird audible pings when the phone is about to receive a call? Make sure you don't bring it to a hospital. And don't carry it close to your nuts.

Blutooth between friends? You mean the way Britney Spears phone was hacked?

[dmack747]

I second the comments on here that Verizon's service runs circles around AT&T's. I laugh every time I see one of their ridiculous more bars in more places commercials. I couldn't make a call from my own house unless I was by a window....and I live in the city. I also agree that Verizon, like Apple, is too controlling with their products. My biggest gripe with the wireless industry is the pricing though. How long before unlimited calling is $20/month and unlimited data is included? Maybe satellite phones will become the next big thing and telecoms can get their margins there while the old wireless technology becomes dirt cheap.

[luke277]

I wish apple would go CDMA.

[thabassman]

I agree. Eventually they will, if not we still have the palm pre?

[MadLyb]

I can almost guarantee that Apple will not go to CDMA...

...because all vendors (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) are either planning (AT&T) or already building out (Verizon) for LTE support which replaces the old protocols.

One less religious divide for people to fight over in the forums.

[abcd9009]

@luke277,

Just an FYI, unlike the rest of the consumer market... when it comes to Cell Phones US is the most outdated market so any changes made to the Cell Phone technology will have to first be embraced in EU and Asia where you can really use all the features that come with the Cell Phone unlike in the US where the manufacturers are at the mercy of the carriers.
So to comment on when Apple would go CDMA, I would have to go with @MadLyb and say highly unlikely since the rest of the world (except for Japan and S. Korea) uses GSM. Japan and S. Korea have way advance technology and gadgets which you might have never even heard of in US. Some of the features like streaming video and Apps for ZipCar to remotely unlock the car door, or use your cell phone as an ATM or credit card have been there for years. The App Store has just made them easily available at one central location.

[MadLyb]

FYI, I nailed it.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/24/source-verizon-hurrying-to-launch-lte-by-early-2010-perhaps-for-apple/

[mattmarkel]

this video shows how much better the experience would be on cdma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZHRgNtNj9M

[bluemist9999]

I've actually heard from a Verizon rep that Apple is going to port the iPhone to Verizon in the near future.

It would be great if they did.

[ZeTron57]

Pure speculation on the verizon rep. There is positively no for sure confirmation other than rumor. My fingers are crossed that it's true though.

The front line Verizon reps (store/call center) and the Apple retail employees will be the last people to hear about a release (or they will hear officially, the same time the rest of the world does).

[hermantf]

A Verizon rep? Dude. Get real. If you believe that Apple and AT&T let their reps know about their plans about ANYTHING (further than a few days out of whatever event, product, etc.), you are living in Fantasy Land. That's top secret stuff.

[viper396]

I'll believe it when I see it.

Untill then I would file this in the same category as all the other stuff you read on the internet that starts with "I heard...", "I have a friend...", "I know someone...", etc.

[cvaldes1831]

That would called the "circular file", yes?

[friday04]

I just wish we could go to a store, like Best Buy or an Apple Store and buy a phone. Who we use as our carrier is an individual decision. No 2-year contracts. No bulltish. Just buy a phone and use it with your carrier.

When I was a kid, we had to wait for the phone company to come to our new house and install our new phone. My parents got to choose their phone from a catalog provided by the phone company. Today, you just go to the store, like Best Buy or Walmart and buy a phone and plug it in your wall and start making calls.

The mobile industry desperately needs to get to this point. They won't give up their customer lock-ins and contracts so I fear we need the government to assist us in this matter. The customer is most-certainly being screwed by all of the current carriers both at home and internationally. This needs to come to an end. It sucks.

[ZeTron57]

I totally agree with you, up until the govermet intervention... Thing is - if you dont like the contract, dont do agree to it (as in dont do business with that company). It's your choice and they're not forcing you to become a customer.

[ade333]

umm, you can do that. It's called buying an "unlocked phone." Not every phone is available this way, but there is a very wide variety. In addition, the great majority of the phones at verizon, att, sprint can be purchased without a contract - they are just more expensive. You can't really complain about this because the phones ARE expensive to make. Verizon, ATT, etc give you a break on the price by, essentially, making up the difference in your monthly payments. You can't do this with the IPhone because, well, Apple wants to control everything you do - it's their credo. But really, what your asking for is available today and has been for.... many years.

[MadLyb]

You can buy unlocked phones all day, but if your are expecting a complete segmentation between phone and carrier, it will never happen.

[SiliconValleyJoe]

All the players are still trying to decide who owns which piece of the pie and where can they each make their money.

Before Apple's iPhone, the players were slowly settling down to a comfortable relatively status quo where everyone more or less knows where everyone else is heading so everyone can make money. Sadly, that model meant the consumers had to put up with difficult to use dumb and smart phones.

With arrival of iPhone, the spigot was busted open. Suddenly, web surfing, video download, photo upload, texting and all sorts of wireless activities are in demand. On top of it, the AppStore now puts the control in a user's hands. The carriers and other device makers are still trying to adapt to this new environment.

Palm, Nokia and RIM ought to be grateful for iPhone. Without iPhone, Pre would never happen, Palm would likely be seeking buyer or filing for bankruptcy. Consumers would still be putting up with Nokia's so-called "smart" phones. RIM would still happily serve the enterprise market. There would be no full web browser, no larger screen, no easier to use human interface, and certainly no applications for consumers to pick and choose.

iPhone has open a new door into tomorrow's mobile digital life, now it is up to the carriers to figure out what their roles are. The one that adapts first will win big.

[ade333]

Madlyb, well of course... there are different networks out there. Wanting that is like buying a web cam and expecting it to work on a PC, Mac, and linux. THERE ARE some that do support all variations, but the demand for it is not high enough to payback the development cost.

[cvaldes1831]

The problem with this is that most Americans would be horrified to find a bunch of phones priced from $199 to $699.

Also, there's still the problem of CDMA versus GSM technologies. This isn't an issue with landline phones, it's all the same signal. On top of even 3G data connections on GSM carriers don't have full compatibility (I believe T-Mobile USA is running on some totally odd frequency that isn't compatible with anything else on the planet).

It does need to come to and end, and indeed it does suck. But rest assured that the cellular carriers in America won't stop sucking for years to come.

[ade333]

Silicon ValleyJoe, giving the credit to Apple is a joke. Microsoft and RIM cut down all the weeds - they did the heavy lifting and added real features to what had only be a "phone" before.

and just an FYI texting and websurfing was huge before there were even rumors of an iphone.

The only thing "new" about the iphone was the touchscreen, which was impressive. The features of that phone had been available for a long time on other phones (HTC, Qualcom (helio) Ocean, etc etc, countless WinMo iterations.

[friday04]

You really missed what he was saying.

Web surfing existed but it was terrible. Safari, a true HTML-rendering browser, was the first of its kind. Opera had something that was getting close but on my Sony Ericsson, it was a pretty miserable experience.

The iPhone wasn't branded with any AT&T logos. No AT&T applications were on the iPhone. The iPhone was unsubsidized and Apple strong-armed AT&T into doing at-home activations and they had a special iPhone-only data plan. That went away with subsidies but Apple broke the rules of engagement. They opened the door for Nokia and RIM to make demands if they wanted. Those companies haven't yet but I think that they're going to. It was a much different landscape in the years before the iPhone.

And there is evidence all over the net (Google it if you have to) that when people got on the iPhone, they did things that were previously possible but either too difficult or too slow to do before. AT&T is getting a lot of flack for their performance but they were simply not ready for the data traffic that iPhone drove. They still aren't ready. Their network is being taxed like it never had been before simply because Apple made surfing the web, emailing a photo, using maps, and other network-intensive tasks so easy to use.

No one said they were first, they just said they brought it to the masses. Microsoft and RIM did not. RIM is gaining consumer appeal and are doing a fine job of making it easier for regular people to do these things. Microsoft is not. They are becoming irrelevant in the mobile space because their mobile OS, which is not based on any Windows code, is awful compared to the competition.

[cvaldes1831]

friday04 is correct.

With the iPhone, Apple brought the smartphone to the masses, popularized it, the same thing they did with music players. Apple's iPod certainly wasn't the first music player on the market, but Apple created a wonderful to easy-to-use end-to-end ecosystem.

Much/most of the stuff that iPhones can do, other smartphones have been able to do, but people aren't using those features as much, simply because they were far less enjoyable experiences.

Let's face it: AT&T is scared sh*tless of its iPhone customers and of Apple. They weren't ready for what they got and they're still playing catch-up. AT&T's 3G network in some locations has severe capacity issues. Every time some iPhone user logs into an AT&T wifi hotspot (provided free to iPhone subscribers, mind you), some AT&T exec breathes a sign of relief before the network status board lights up like a blood-red Christmas tree again.

Just as Apple turned the table on the music industry, it is in the process of doing so with the cellular industry. Microsoft had zero impact on the digital music industry. Microsoft's potential impact on the smartphone industry diminishes a little bit each day that they cannot put forth a credible, scalable operating system for mobile devices.

[dbargen]

Tell me about it, Jay. That's why I refuse to get any smartphone from VZW, even though I'm currently stuck with this particularly odious carrier thanks too many ppl in my wife's family using that network.

And I wouldn't call it a dongle so much as a forcing you to use their network to move any data, instead of being able to hook your mobile up to you computer.

[dylerl]

Thank you Friday04, what many people do not understand here is that before the Iphone ATT had none of these issues, frankly I dont have these issues becuase I have an Iphone and do not live in a major metropolis. The ATT network is being hit hard in big citiies becuase of the Iphone. This is overloading the network in certain places and making it so the network is dropping calls, etc. This will also happen on verizon if they switch the Iphone to their network. With the slew of people moving to the Iphone on the verizon network if they get it or current people on verizon it will bog down the network as well, so be prepared for your beloved Verizon to go the way ATT's is not, ATT is fixing the issues by the end of this year and then if VZW does get the Iphone the ATT network will be set for it and work perfectly and VZW will not be ready for the slew of data they will have and all you people will be hating them at this point because the VZW network is dropping calls. Until we get to LTE which everyone is going to use we will have theses issues no matter what network we are on.

[useful_worms]

Excellent. In my wildest dream, Verizon gets the iPhone and they go head to head with AT&T in a price war. Customers will benefit and both providers will have to make better, faster networks. I love it!

[Jallenbullock]

Sorry guys, but it does also depend on the PHONE how many bars you get... I heard a lot of Palm Pres are getting sent back, not sure how true this is, I believe I read about it at itworld.com. It has been rumored that Apple is coming out with something for Verizon. Blackberry phones are the most popular business phone, and yet, they get significantly less signal than just about any other phone.
I have seen a blackberry curve and an iPhone 3G side by side, the iPhone's connection is literally four times as fast, the curve was pulling about 20kbps while the iPhone approximately 80kbps(the iPhone showing a signal strength above what the blackberry was receiving by one, two and three bars).
Truth is though, if RIM doesn't start making changes and apple continues to add business needed features like they have been, such as secure email, RIM is going to die and it will be up to Google and Microsoft to not let apple have to much fun. However this topic was really more about AT&T/Verizon not Research in motion and Apple. And unless you go out there testing all service providers all across the ding dang dong country(with a device MADE FOR TESTING cell signal strength), I don't think you can fairly say that either provider has more bars. Verizon may have more customers at the moment, but that doesn?t give them the worlds largest network either. When it comes to costumer support between Verizon and AT&T, I believe lately Verizon has been more generous trying to win customers from AT&T than rely on the loyalty of the existing costumers.

~ Juicy juice

[ISwitched]

You wont see IPhones on Verizon until LTE is adopted. Apple is aiming at the new technology - not the old Verizon mode.

I Verizon thinks they have the biggest network, how come my IPhine worked flawlessly in Europe, and my families Verizon phones were useless - it's the protocol ATT is adopting the newer standards faster than Verizon.

[hhhhhhhhhmmmmmm]

LTE is vaporware. They promised early 2008, to be release with wimax. Then it was late 2008, then early 2009. Now verizon says late 2009, but the lte groups say early 2010. For the first deployment. If you are wanting for the iphone and lte, it will be atleast 2015 before they get major cities covered. 2020 before coast to coast. If, they can agree on the final specs, which they have not. Most lte tech is a miss mash of different product specs and different uses of different protocols. Most lte receivers can not talk to most stations.
It is a nightmare.

Mean while Wimax has launched in 200+ countries with over 130 different companies, and 12 major cites USA with three major carriers. Is up and running communicating at 4mbs. With promise of greater speeds after the robustness is tested and confirmed in the next few months/ early next year.

[pwittenb]

VZW - that churn - ing sound you hear is me headed for a better phone. Unfortunately a worse network. 59 days and counting

[brandonk03]

I was with Sprint for a few years, and left because customer support was HORRIBLE.... So I decided 2 port my number over 2 Verizon, and I couldn't even get a signal at my house, and I live in a large suburb of Cincinnati, and there's even a Verizon store not even a mile away! What a joke.....besides, you can't even use your phone overseas, like in Europe. So I tried AT&T, and I ALWAYS have full coverage where I go, all over and around Cincinnati, I even get a full signal in my basement! Plus, AT&T has ALWAYS unlocked any phone I have ever used with them, without any problems, so when I go out of the country, I can get a local SIM card and not pay ridiculous international roaming rates.....Bottom line, I will always stay with AT&T, and I will never go to Verizon, because AT&T clearly is the better and much larger global network, and Verizon SUCKS, and their coverage sucks, and it's sad that the only reason Verizon can say they have more subscribers is because they just bought Alltel

[mattmarkel]

This video highlights the iPhone on AT&T's network vs. on Sprint's network using the Mi-Fi device, the results are embarrassing for AT&T.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZHRgNtNj9M

[Amirz1000]

Dude this test was done on edge that's why the AT&T numbers are so low. I never get less than 700k download on 3g. Everyone needs to realize that the iPhone is the best phone out and will be for years to come. It happens to be on AT&T. If you don't like it go get a pre or a blackberry but as bad as you may think AT&T is, you will be more unhappy with a different phone. As of now, the positives out do the negatives by a ton!

ATT is the BEST network. Makes Larry sound like Mary - or speaking into a can.

Can you hear me -sounds like - Tan your rear Lee!!!!

CDMA sucks or how you CDMA users hear it - Clymidia Lucks

[brynn08]

ATT has the best network? ??? thats the funniest statement i read thus far....i have 2 phones.....sprint (my main line ive had for 7 years) and ATT(family plan which i dont pay for) i travel alot....and drop way more calls than i do with my sprint line...idiotic naive ATT customers

[smrtone4u]

who cares honestly which service provider you go with. If you like it....use it, quit whining like children. I have used sprint(hated), verizon(phones suck, and network was slow) I am on an iphone 3gs right now with att, just did a speedtest and got 2456kb/s down and 436 kb/s up in a suburb of atlanta, i have not dropped one call yet. I am happy with that, and really dont care if you hate att, verizon, sprint....whatever.