I live in Albany, GA, about 7 miles away from downtown, where there is an AT&T tower. When one of my friends brought his iPhone over to my home, he never could receive phone service. In fact, to get service, he had to stand on the front of my driveway, about 100 feet in front of the house.

Around town, this case is not unique. I have heard of people just walking inside a building and losing service. Another one of my friends had a hard time getting and maintaining service while on the road, 20 miles away from the tower as the crow flies. Even my high school's technology administrator, who owns an iPhone, has had a hard time keeping his service from within the building. I actually previously owned a Cingular prepaid phone, which I gave up and sold on eBay because it had horrible service. For example, if I were still using that phone, I would be getting roaming service (or rather, "Cingular's Extended Network") from where I'm sitting withing my house.

I now own a Verizon phone, and I have no problem getting 4 bars while typing this article in front of my computer. In fact, I have not had a problem with Verizon's service since 2005, when I received my first Verizon phone.

(For the sake of objectivity, I should also point out that Alltel rents Verizon's tower here in Albany, and as a result puts out even more horrible service than even AT&T.)

As I researched the "history of the iPhone," I discovered that Apple had actually entered into early talks with Verizon about using Verizon's network for the iPhone. However, Apple is an extremely demanding company that will whine, bicker, and finally back out of deals when it does not get its way, which is exactly what happened. AT&T (which was Cingular at the time), was more cooperative with Apple (some might argue a little too cooperative), which is why Apple opted to go with AT&T.

My point here is that Apple should have compromised (at least a little) with Verizon, as they clearly offer better service. It's not like Apple really cares about its customers, though; they have been known to sue even their most loyal customers for thousands of dollars over a slight copyright infringement. I might have actually terminated my current cell phone contract to buy up an iPhone if Verizon had offered it. Instead, I went with an iPod touch.

Learn more about this author, Nathan Edwards.
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