Just took this shot of the corner of my yard… with the iPhone. Not bad for a phone shot; sometimes it surprises me.

Why, yes. I have been up since 3:30a, why do you ask?

It’s big news, the Verizon version of the iPhone. Even though the iPhone4 on Verizon is 3G, people can’t wait for the apps. Pre-sales aside [they sold out in 2 hours], it hits stores tomorrow.
Coincidentally, Verizon has made several moves to throttle customers’ data usage in anticipation of the unprecedented broadband demand.

Verizon is like a new company. They stopped the popular ‘New every 2′ program just before the iPhone debut and also doubled the early termination fee to $350. There’s talk of going to tiered data plans and they have also instituted data caps. If you think that’s only for the top 5%, the rest of us will be subject to ‘optimization’ of our data as well.

As part of our continuing efforts to provide the best experience to our more than 94 million customers, Verizon Wireless is introducing two new network management practices.

We are implementing optimization and transcoding technologies in our network to transmit data files in a more efficient manner to allow available network capacity to benefit the greatest number of users. These techniques include caching less data, using less capacity, and sizing the video more appropriately for the device. The optimization process is agnostic to the content itself and to the website that provides it. While we invest much effort to avoid changing text, image, and video files in the compression process and while any change to the file is likely to be indiscernible, the optimization process may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device. For a further, more detailed explanation of these techniques, please visit www.verizonwireless.com/vzwoptimization

If you subscribe to a Data Plan or Feature on February 3, 2011 or after, the following applies:
Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren’t negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.

Wired spells it out…

And here we thought Verizon’s network technology was better-prepared than AT&T to handle a big crowd of iPhone customers. While our initial tests showed that Verizon was better at making and holding phone calls, its data speeds are slower than AT&T’s. The company must be worried about the effects of an influx of iPhone customers — otherwise, why would it throttle bandwidth like this?

The throttling policy will impact only a small number of users: Verizon claims only the top 5 percent of data hogs will be throttled. (AT&T also previously claimed that a small number of users were hogging a massive amount of network bandwidth before it dropped unlimited data.) But the “optimization” method involves caching less data and resizing video, which “may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device” — and that affects every Verizon customer.

That’s an abuse of the word “unlimited,” which is becoming a common practice in the broadband arena. Comcast used to promote unlimited data as well, but customers reported their service was cut off after exceeding an invisible limit; the broadband provider later switched to monthly data caps.

Actions such as data throttling are symptomatic of an ugly truth about the broadband industry. Internet providers would much rather slow everybody down than invest in more hardware to support more customers.

But just like AT&T, Verizon plans to switch to tiered pricing in the future, according to Stratton. Verizon’s unlimited data plan, available for a limited time, is just another example of bait-and-switch.

They’re in business to make money, but given enough time, the market will judge how well these new changes go over with consumers. Many people are going to wish the iPhone had never come to Verizon…

On the flip side, T-Mobile is battling the Verizon juggernaut with an amazing offer this weekend: if you sign a 2 year agreement, any phone in the store is free. We’re talking high end smartphones… but their tiered data plans can be expensive.

We use Verizon, have for many years. But our contract ran out a couple of years ago…