During the past two weeks I have spoken to two people in upper management at Verizon Wireless regarding the GN2 release. This post is for those that care about the conversation.
Both conversations happened with individuals no further than 3 levels down from the CEO. Keep in mind that many of the same questions were asked or mentioned multiple times and the same answer was not always repeated and thus I had to read between the lines.
Here is what I gathered.
Verizon did not sell the Note 1 (as we know) and was not confident enough that it would work on their network as planned so instead of releasing it when other carriers did, it instead allowed 1) field testers to use it for the past month as they have with much success and 2) allow US Cellular to sell the gray version (to test) since they share many towers.
Realizing the white version is much more popular, US Cellular is not allowed to release it until/after Verizon does (to avoid customers switching to US Cellular). Apparently Verizon and US Cellular share A LOT of towers and if you are in an area without VZLTE, USC may be a better option.
The release is targeted for Christmas shopping and VZ did not see enough demand to warrant releasing it any earlier (ie: prior to Thanksgiving). Given the comment that was made about needing to test the phone, I'm not sure this would have even been an option.
Throughout both calls, both mention that the phone will be released on the 27th and also will be shipped on the 27th but also mentioned that it will be released on the 29th. I purposely did not try to pin down a date since what we have heard is that it will ship by the 27th and release on the 29th. I'm not familiar with Verizon so I'm not sure if a Tuesday release is possible. The Droid DNA is to be released on November 21 so we know Wednesday is an option.
All of this does not help us get our phone any sooner but I ended both conversations felling more aware of why Verizon postponed the release and confident that it will be my next carrier on the 27/29th of November.
Hope this was worth the read.
Both conversations happened with individuals no further than 3 levels down from the CEO. Keep in mind that many of the same questions were asked or mentioned multiple times and the same answer was not always repeated and thus I had to read between the lines.
Here is what I gathered.
Verizon did not sell the Note 1 (as we know) and was not confident enough that it would work on their network as planned so instead of releasing it when other carriers did, it instead allowed 1) field testers to use it for the past month as they have with much success and 2) allow US Cellular to sell the gray version (to test) since they share many towers.
Realizing the white version is much more popular, US Cellular is not allowed to release it until/after Verizon does (to avoid customers switching to US Cellular). Apparently Verizon and US Cellular share A LOT of towers and if you are in an area without VZLTE, USC may be a better option.
The release is targeted for Christmas shopping and VZ did not see enough demand to warrant releasing it any earlier (ie: prior to Thanksgiving). Given the comment that was made about needing to test the phone, I'm not sure this would have even been an option.
Throughout both calls, both mention that the phone will be released on the 27th and also will be shipped on the 27th but also mentioned that it will be released on the 29th. I purposely did not try to pin down a date since what we have heard is that it will ship by the 27th and release on the 29th. I'm not familiar with Verizon so I'm not sure if a Tuesday release is possible. The Droid DNA is to be released on November 21 so we know Wednesday is an option.
All of this does not help us get our phone any sooner but I ended both conversations felling more aware of why Verizon postponed the release and confident that it will be my next carrier on the 27/29th of November.
Hope this was worth the read.