Bijan Sabet

The Carrier Question

Now that that iPhone 4S is out there, the biggest question seems to be: which carrier to go with in the U.S.?

AT&T gives you speed — they’re the only network currently supporting the 14.4 down that Apple mentioned on stage yesterday. But AT&T blows in big cities like San Francisco and New York. It’s hard to vote for speed when you can’t even get a connection at all.

Sprint gives you unlimited. Their plans are clearly going to be the best from a cost perspective. And, as the new kid on the block, they will likely have the least congested network. But they’re also the third-place carrier.

Verizon gets you reliability. They’re the most expensive and don’t offer speed or unlimited. But you pay for the quality of their network.

Right now, I’m torn. I won’t go back to AT&T because of my awful experience the last time. But Verizon versus Sprint seems to be a toss-up.

I think having the iPhone on three carriers in the U.S. is ultimately going to be a very good thing for consumers. Instead of taking features away and raising prices as AT&T and Verizon have been doing for years, they may be forced to actually compete with incentives for users.

I’m likely going to switch back to AT&T

There is no doubt that Verizon’s voice network much better.

But I’m told the iPhone4S cant do simultaneous data and voice. And my Verizon iphone4 often loses 3G connectivity.

I’m thinking data is more important than voice.

Source: parislemon