Bloomberg is reporting that the iPhone may be breaking onto America’s favorite network in January of next year. The report cites two unnamed sources who are, as always, close to the issue.

There has been a lot of speculation about the end of the AT&T exclusivity arrangement, especially when AT&T started offering up iPhone 4 upgrades to anyone that would take one.

The device will be available to customers in January, according to the people, who declined to be named because the information isn’t public. Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, and Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, declined to comment.

The iPhone, which has been the sole domain of rival AT&T in the U.S. since June 2007, will give Verizon a boost in its competition for smartphone customers, UBS AG analyst John Hodulik said in an interview. Verizon customers, who numbered 92.8 million at the end of the first quarter, may buy 3 million iPhones a quarter, he estimates.

For now I’ll remain skeptical, if only because there have been rumors of a Verizon iPhone for years now. Actually, I just don’t want to believe I signed with AT&T when Verizon was just around the corner.

Verizon said it would cut 13,000 jobs from its landline unit in a conference call today. The company missed sales estimates by less than one percent, which prompted it to axe approximately 11 percent of the land-line division’s workforce.

The company cuts are really to hedge losses in other divisions. Though the landline division was up almost 10% in sales over last year, enterprise and FiOS TV and Internet sales were down in the face of the poor economy. Most analysts predict that things will improve little in 2010. Verizon’s CFO is optimistic about the Apple tablet, though. “It will attract more and more data customers, more and more usage over the network,” he said. “Devices like that will be, long term, very positive for the wireless industry.”

Guess we’ll know more about whether Verizon is a part of Apple’s plan tomorrow.

Source: Bloomberg

When you get poppy hipsters upset, they’re bound to go all sorts of loco on your ass. Take MIA. She recently had a three-hour long customer support call with Verizon, which prompted her to write a new song, titled “I’m Down Like Your Internet Connection.”

The song is set to be part of MIA’s new album, Kala which will be out later this year. For part of the song, MIA got Filipino Verizon employees to sing the hook. “I was having issues with my cable and wireless, and I was on the phone [with tech support] for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music, could you just learn these lyrics and sing it down the phone to me?'” she said. “Ten phone calls later, I have Internet that sticks and a song.”

Now you know Verizon. You’ve got some bad publicity in the form of a pop song and your customer support reps aren’t helping your cause.

Source: Rolling Stone

It’s hard to say who to blame for this one. On the one hand, I want to scream at Ted Estarija for not explaining the idea of data charges to his 13 year-old son. Not everyone is as tech savvy as you and me, though. On the other, you have to wonder why no one at Verizon noticed the sudden surge on the account – from zero data to 1.4GB in a month.

Whoever you blame, Ted Estarija still got slapped with a $21,917 bill for the server traffic. In a rare show of understanding, Verizon waived the entire bill. The lesson in all of this? Buy a data plan. That $15/month looks pretty great next to $21,917.

Source: AP

Verizon might be getting cocky about this whole Droid thing, but it’s becoming painfully clear that Big Red is hurting from all that missed iPhone business. In a move to recoup some of its losses to iPhone churn, Verizon may be looking at bumping that early termination fee – all the way up to $350.

To be fair, the iPhone is not the only thing to blame. People have been opening new lines on existing contracts for some time, paying the early termination fees, and then reselling contract-priced phones like the Blackberry Storm on eBay for a couple hundred bucks in profit. Well no more. The new fee will apply specifically to “advanced devices,” which pretty much covers anything Verizon deems expensive enough to make you pay for.

The only good news is that the price will decrease by $10 per month over the life of your contract. So halfway through you’re back to the original fee of $175.

Source: Boy Genius Report