Verizon Android Phone (Droid)

[eht13]

Originally Posted by Kal-El

And before the iPhone came out and Cingular was merged into AT&T (around the same time), I never even heard about of AT&T still playing in the market. Heck, I thought they went away years before! All of a sudden they had emerged as the "new at&t" out of no where and bought the much more prominent Cingular.

Here's a not-so-quick history.

At one point (before cell phones and the internet) AT&T was the phone company in the US. To address antitrust concerns, the government broke up the company in the 80's into regional "baby bells" (but AT&T as a company remained, it was just much smaller). Two of those baby bells were Southwestern Bell and Southern Bell. Southwestern Bell later became SBC, and Southern Bell later became Bellsouth. Those two companies created a joint venture wireless company and called it Cingular Wireless. Incidentally, around the same time, Verizon was created as a combination of other baby bells, including former regional wireless companies such as Airtouch.

Around the same time that Cingular and Verizon came along, AT&T spun off a wireless company and called it AT&T Wireless; it was a separate company. Later, Cingular Wireless bought AT&T Wireless. Then more recently, SBC (one of Cingular's two parent companies) bought AT&T, and renamed themselves AT&T (and started the "the new AT&T" campaign, together with an altered company logo), since the brand was still so famous worldwide. So one of the former baby bells actually bought their former parent, in effect.

Then after that, AT&T (the renamed SBC) bought Bellsouth, who was Cingular Wireless' other parent company. So at that point, Cingular was now wholly owned by one company, called AT&T, so the Cingular name also went away in favor of just being called AT&T.

Originally Posted by Kal-El

I'm not sure how that is possible since the iPhone is only designed to run on AT&T's network design which is an incompatible system that Verizon uses.

Exactly... it's not possible unless Apple ever builds an iPhone for Verizon, which as I said I doubt they would do. The iPhone is made to run on GSM networks along with the EDGE and 3G data technology that AT&T operates (the same technology that other iPhone carriers in other countries operate). The Verizon network is a different technology (CDMA, plus a different data technology). The other US carrier that runs GSM is T-Mobile, so I guess it would be possible to use an iPhone on that if it was unlocked from AT&T.

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BTW... I love my iPhone. : )