Tag Archives | Verizon Wireless

How To: Prepare to Switch from AT&T to Verizon

[Note: This post republished with permission from our pals at Macworld.]

Has the flame fizzled out of your relationship with AT&T? Was it originally love at first sight, but now you’ve caught yourself eyeing that new iPhone Verizon just announced? Don’t worry, our love affairs with gadgets and wireless carriers are often fleeting, and the only thing at risk of getting hurt is your wallet. If you’re looking to switch from AT&T for Verizon’s new iPhone 4, here’s how you can do it.

I’ll try to answer a few general questions before we get into details. First, you should be able to bring your current phone number to Verizon if you’re switching from AT&T. It’s the law. You might even be able to bring your home phone number, too.

Also, as with all wireless carriers, if you signed a contract to get your phone for cheaper than its full retail price, AT&T charges an early termination fee (ETF) if you want to break that contract early. But whether you’re going to cut the AT&T chord or you’re a free spirit with no obligations, let’s start preparing you for a Verizon iPhone.
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Yep, the Verizon iPad is Also Happening

With Apple and Verizon Wireless sharing a newfound affection for each other, we kind of assumed the iPad would follow the iPhone 4’s tracks and wind up on Verizon’s CDMA network.

Assume no more. Quoting Francis Shammo, Verizon’s chief financial officer, Bloomberg reports that the iPad will eventually get an embedded chip to run directly on Verizon Wireless. Currently, Verizon sells an iPad and Mi-Fi hotspot for the same prices as AT&T’s iPad with 3G built in, along with data plans starting at $20 per month for 1 GB.

But Shammo didn’t say when the Verizon iPad would happen, and it’s certainly not an official announcement of any kind, so the news raises more questions than it answers.

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What's the Difference Between the AT&T and Verizon iPhone?

[Note: This article republished courtesy of our pals at PCWorld.]

It’s official: Apple and Verizon announced the iPhone 4 will finally land on the country’s largest carrier starting February 10. The Verizon iPhone costs just as much as the AT&T iPhone, and the phones have virtually identical feature sets. However, there are a few differences you should keep in mind when choosing an iPhone from one of the two carriers.

The basic difference between the Verizon and the AT&T iPhone is the antenna inside. The Verizon iPhone is compatible with the 3G EV-DO standard (not 4G LTE despite the carrier’s huge launch of 4G-compatible devices at CES), with data download speeds of up to 1.4Mbps. The AT&T iPhone is compatible with the UMTS standard, which can achieve download speeds of up to 3Mbps. Check out the differences between the AT&T and Verizon iPhone at a glance < on the chart below.

Because the Verizon iPhone is not based on the latest 4G LTE standard, the AT&T iPhone can theoretically achieve faster download speeds than the Verizon model. However, AT&T’s network is not as reliable as Verizon’s in many places across the country, so the speed you would actually get on either of the phones depends mainly on where you live and how good the coverage is in your area.

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The Verizon iPhone: It's a Verizon iPhone!


In the end, today’s Verizon “Latest News” event was pretty much what just about everybody expected it would be: the launch of the iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless’s CDMA network. (My best guesses about the event were mostly accurate, although I said I thought Steve Jobs would be here–Apple COO Tim Cook was instead–and Verizon hasn’t announced anything at all about data plan pricing, let alone whether unlimited data will be available. And the predictions of late-January availability were a tad off: Current Verizon customers will be able to pre-order on February 3rd, and everyone else will need to wait until the phone goes on sale on February 10th.)

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Verizon Event Live Blog Coverage This Morning

Greetings from a taxicab in chilly New York. I’m on my way to Verizon’s “Latest News event,” where the company will stun the world–if it doesn’t announce that Apple’s iPhone is coming to its network. Live coverage of the event begins at 11am ET/8am PT at technologizer.com/verizon. (Pssst: I’ll try to be there a few minutes early.)

I’m happy to report that we’ll have two special guests providing color commentary from San Francisco: Macworld Editorial Director Jason Snell and PCWorld Assistant Editor Nick Mediati. They’ll share their thoughts on the news as it develops as I report from the scene here in Manhattan.

If you’re reading this before the event kicks off, feel free to share any last-minute predictions or other thoughts. It’s going to be a weird feeling if nobody ever writes or reads another article longing for a Verizon iPhone or reporting (rightly or wrongly) that one is imminent. Pining for a Sprint iPhone or a T-Mobile iPhone just isn’t going to be the same…

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Coming on Tuesday: Verizon iPhone Event Live Blog Coverage

Next Tuesday at 11am ET/8am PT, Verizon is holding an event in New York to announce the Verizon iPhone. (Okay, all the company is saying is that it’ll share its “latest news”–but if it doesn’t relate to the iPhone, I know a lot of people who will be stunned.) I don’t know whether Steve Jobs will attend, but I will–and I hope you will, too, by participating in our live blog coverage. It’ll live at technologizer.com/verizon, and you can head there right now to sign up for an e-mail reminder.

 

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CES 2011: More Internet Video to Flow to TVs, PCs and Smartphones

Wednesday is Press Day here at CES, a day when major consumer electronics players like LG, Netgear and Intel traditionally make big announcements in advance of the full show that starts tomorrow. If there’s an underlying message here in Las Vegas so far, it’s that companies are getting the word that consumers want to view more content–whether Hollywood- or user-generated–from and over the Internet, on devices ranging from TVs to PCs and smartphones.

In delivering a roadmap of LG’s TV plans for 2011 today, Tim Alessi, LG’s director of new product development for home electronics, listed “more content to watch”  – together with connectivity to home networks and easier-to-use 3D TV – as the three key linchpins for the year ahead.

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This Dumb Year: The 57 Lamest Tech Moments of 2010

Progress–to swipe an ancient General Electric slogan–is the technology industry’s most important product. Its second-most important product? That’s easy: blunders. In fact, you could argue that the two are inextricably intertwined. An industry that was more uptight about making mistakes might be more cautious and therefore less inventive.

It’s also sometimes difficult to tell where progress ends and blunder begins, or vice versa. If you believe that Google Wave was a bad idea in the first place, you might think it was smart of Google to kill it this year–but if you thought Wave had promise, then it’s Google’s early cancellation that’s the gaffe.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that while the industry’s lame moments are…well, lame, they can also be important. Last year, I summed up a decade’s worth of tech screw-ups and came up with 87 examples. This time around, I’m covering only a single year–but I found 57 items worth commemorating. No, tech companies aren’t getting more error prone; I was just more diligent. And as usual, there was plenty of ground to cover.

Thanks once again to Business 2.0’s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business and, of course, to Esquire’s Dubious Achievement Awards for inspiring this. Here we go…

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