Despite commercials avowing that they’re the nation’s fastest network, period—along with some creative vocabulary tricks—AT&T service is generally recognized as the burden one must bear if you’re going to carry an iPhone, the monkey on your back who’s too busy scratching his nuts to load a webpage in a timely fashion. Well, no more: Verizon has announced that iPhone’s long, occasionally abusive monogamy with AT&T is over as of February 10, when all iPhone 4s will be available starting at $199 for a 16GB 2-year plan, which is the same price as AT&T.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an iPhone without some caveats—namely that the device won’t actually work on the Verizon’s actually-proven-faster 4G LTE network, but rather its regular 3G network, you can’t use voice and data simultaneously ("I think people place emphasis on different things," shrugs Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook), and anyone looking to make the switch from AT&T to Verizon will have to get a totally new phone, since the devices are not interchangeable. But hey, it’s a start, right?