There will be people who have iPhone 3G or 3GS and have been waiting for iphone on Verizon.

Maybe. But won't the 3GS owners still be locked into their 2-year contracts (from mid-2009 and later)?

My wife has the 3G and it's ridiculously slow (compared to the iPhone 4 or the iPad).

I think people should wait for iPhone 5 before signing any new contacts...

A lot of folks buy their phones on eBay or other places, to avoid long-term contracts with a carrier. My last couple of phones have been that way. In fact, as of this summer, I will have 3 phones/3 lines in my family completely without contactual obligation. That will allow me to have serious leverage with my current carrier, or with another. And no ETF's to worry about.

I have 3GS and I am allowed to upgrade after Feb 2011.

I think people will defect from AT&T if they are unhappy with their reception or other service related issues. Verizon is reputed to have the best reception. As far as contracts go, not everyone with a iPhone 4 is on the hook for two years and some people might be willing to eat the ETF if they see any savings from Verizon (doubtful) or they're just plain sick of AT&T. (I was willing to eat an ETF from Time Warner to switch to Fios for the monthly savings and superior technology.)

If AT&T get an iPhone 5 that supports 4G that would be nice in theory depending on how many markets they actually have 4G coverage and whether they charge a monthly premium to get 4G service as Sprint does currently with their Evo 4G. I'm with Sprint and if I want an Evo 4G I have to pay $10 more a month for 4G service that doesn't exist in my area. It's BS but that's how the cellphone business is these days.

I'm on Verizon and I'm praying that they don't come out with an iphone. The network is very stable and adding 1-3MM iphones is going to be a bandwidth killer.

Seems to me this whole thing has some folks in limbo
so to speak. Some are expecting a new iPhone of some
sort. So folks want to wait and see whats up with that.

People like me have a 3G and can upgrade now but are
not i'm sure they should. Without some solid new information
regarding expected choices, what's the advantage in doing so?
I believe I should at least wait until I can see what Verizon is
offering if in fact they have an iPhone. My guess is that AT&T
may have to sweeten the deal to keep customers no matter
how much they proclaim their new expansion. :dunno:

Both Thunder and Q make valid points. Adding that many users to VZ's network would be felt in metro areas for sure unless they have or will make big infrastructure improvements.

AT&T will definitely try to retain customers. That's just how it goes in the cellphone game. It's crappy that a customer has to threaten to leave before they finally try to make them happy. I know that with Sprint, the only way I can get anything done is to say the word "cancel" and they pass me off to retentions. I learned that their CSRs are trained to do that whenever the word "cancel" is spoken so if you don't want to deal with their lower tier CS, call up, say "hello, I'd like to cancel" as your first words.

iPhone 5 is supposed to have FaceTime on 3G and 4G and not just wifi. Imagine what that will do to their network.
With "Clone Wars" the iPhone has lost some of its exquisiteness(sp?).
Motorola is coming with dual processer with nVidia chip, Droid phone in Q1, which is rumored to be better than iPhone 4.
:popcorn:

It's pretty easy to say that your new phone is better than an iPhone when it hasn't even started shipping yet :). Let's wait to see the battery life etc... on that first shall we. The Blackberry Torch was supposed to be better than an iPhone too, but now they are giving them away ;)