Are you a Verizon iPhone customer? Do you have unlimited data? If so, then according to this new report, you may never be able to make a FaceTime call over 3G, while other customers on Verizon’s new tiered data plans will be able to.
Verizon has reportedly been tweaking and enhancing its cell network to be able to handle FaceTime calls over 3G. Unfortunately, it appears that Verizon, in a ridiculous and anti-consumer act of pure greed (and perhaps advanced evil), will be blocking their unlimited data customers from utilizing the service.
There’s currently a disagreement between Apple and Verizon, and they have not yet reached a final agreement regarding FaceTime. Apple wants FaceTime to be a seamless experience that works for all Verizon iPhone customers, whereas Verizon wants to use the service as leverage to force their users into obscenely expensive tiered data agreements.
This is a fairly big deal – if Apple and Verizon can’t reach an agreement over this, Verizon iPhone users may not be able to make 3G FaceTime calls at all. But it’s an even bigger (and far worse) deal if Verizon gets their way, as it will become yet another way for cell companies like Verizon and AT&T to overcharge, gouge, and alienate their customers just to make an extra buck on their already very overpriced offerings.
While a Verizon victory in this department would ultimately mean higher quality 3G FaceTime calls, as fewer users would be competing for bandwidth, it still sucks for all those users that refuse to buy in to Verizon’s ridiculous tiered data plans.
Further, as I’ve previously said about AT&T, it’s simply incomprehensible to me that Verizon, with the prices they charge and the ridiculous profits that they rake in quarter after quarter and year after year, can’t simply invest a good bit of that money into actually improving their network rather than resorting to greedy consumer-negating price tricks to hide the real problem.