AT&T’s move for a temporary restraining order on Verizon Wireless’ latest television ads is rather laughable, at least to those of us out here in middle America. The bickering over whose network is the most dependable, the largest, the fastest has been going on for years, and more often than not the consumer is none the wiser, nor better connected, for all the carrier chest bumping.
What I find most interesting about all this is that reliability, speed and dependability, as these terms pertain to carrier networks, vary wildly by location. AT&T might be the fastest 3G network in Toledo, Ohio, but the slowest with the most dropped calls in San Francisco. Verizon may suffer awful download speeds in Portland, Maine, but be streaming video at 5 megabytes per second in Kansas City, Mo.
This back and forth is all about big cities and branding. When you hear the blogging elite lambasting AT&T about poor coverage, slow data connections and all the rest of it, you’re basically hearing from people who live in some of AT&T’s worst markets, where there is high iPhone adoption (i.e., San Francisco and New York). Will Verizon experience the same problems in these places once the Droid digs in? No one knows.
I’m currently based in Madison, Wis. I use an iPhone. I get great service from AT&T. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve suffered a dropped call yet. A friend of mine is ashamed of his new Droid every time we’re in his basement and I search the Web with my iPhone. His Droid, on Verizon Wireless, doesn’t do so hot down there. Would I run out and say Verizon Wireless has an awful network because of this? Absolutely not, because I know the next time I’m in San Fran, the guy sitting next to me with a Droid is going to be happily surfing the Web, while I’m lucky if I can get my e-mail to download.
The war that is happening between AT&T and Verizon is a fight for mindshare, and any victories can only be applied to the real world on a very limited scale. What people in big cities tend to forget is that the “rest of the country” really does exist, and when combined as a whole, we account for a sizable chunk of the market. No matter where you go, people have very different carrier allegiances for a variety of reasons.
Every analyst out there will tell you that exponential smartphone and netbook adoption, when combined with rich media, will eventually tax any network that runs on spectrum, and they all do. Both Verizon and AT&T know that 4G is essential. And even then, no one is sure if it will be enough.
My point? We’re not all suffering the same fates on our respective networks. Any attempt to claim one service as ultimately better than the other will have no bearing on reality. Hold your demonizing of any one network for another year and then let’s see who’s downloading what and at what speeds and where.