Many are confident that Verizon's event on Tuesday will be used to announce the availability of a CDMA iPhone, but some of the finer points of the launch are still up in the air. The folks at Reuters have attempted to clarify things a bit for us, reporting that the Verizon iPhone will be shipping "a few weeks" after it's announced. We've heard February 3rd get kicked around as the release date, and that claim seems to mesh well with the one from Reuters. Additionally, "a person familiar with the matter" has said that Verizon will keep its $30 unlimited data plan intact as a way to differentiate its device from AT&T's. Unfortunately, it sounds like the unlimited data option may be a limited time thing, as Verizon execs have already said that the mobile industry must move to tiered data at some point in the future.
There are likely a lot of users that'll be jumping ship from AT&T to Verizon for the iPhone when it does finally launch on Big Red, although with this news, it's possible that some of them will be switching for reasons other than the fact that Verizon is getting the iPhone. Since AT&T no longer offers unlimited smartphone data, I could see some of the more data-hungry customers going to Verizon simply for the data plan. When the mythical VZW iPhone does finally arrive, it'll be interesting to see how all of that new data use affects the network, especially with the fact that Verizon is already supporting several data-gobbling Androids. How do you think Verizon's network will fare once millions of new iPhone users arrive?
