The Verizon iPhone, that most elusive of beasts. Taunting us since day one with your tales of missed opportunities, exclusivity contracts and stubborn executives. At long last we finally have word of your coming and that day is January the eleventh, two thousand and eleven. You’ll have to pardon the dramatics, what I’m really trying to say is that Verizon will be announcing the iPhone coming to their network on January 11th, this Tuesday. Here’s how we know and what we know about the way it will come and what it means for current Verizon subscribers and switchers.

When It’s Coming.

While the date of the iPhone coming to Verizon has yet to be confirmed by any official notice from Verizon or Apple themselves, the Apple journalist community as a whole reached the conclusion due to an invite sent out to various members of the press on Tuesday, January 4th. The invite was first mentioned by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop and shortly thereafter confirmed by M.G Seigler of Techcrunch, John Gruber of Daringf Fireball and a few other industry insiders. The invitation looks like this:

While speculation that the event was related to the release of the iPhone on Verizon, it wasn’t until Gizmodo confirmed that it was not invited that everything started to firm up. Gizmodo, as you may remember, is persona non-grata around anything Apple as they were the ones to obtain the lost iPhone 4 prototype and release images and video of it months before it’s release. This explained why Jim Dalrymple, an Apple blogger and Seigler, a journalist with a close relationship with Verizon, would both be invited to such an event but Gizmodo, who also has a great working relationship with Verizon, would be left off of the list.

Shortly thereafter, the rumors were confirmed by the Wall Street Journal in an article that referenced ‘people’ that are ‘familiar with the matter’:

The largest U.S. wireless carrier will make the long-awaited announcement at an event Tuesday in New York City, people familiar with the matter said. The phone will make its way to Verizon Wireless stores around the end of January, a person familiar with the matter said.

So the iPhone will be announced on Verizon on January 11th, but when will it be available for purchase? Well, a report by Reuters states that the launch will be a ‘couple of weeks’ after the announcement:

Verizon Wireless, the top U.S. mobile provider, plans on Tuesday to unveil a version of the Apple Inc iPhone for its service and will kick off sales of the device a few weeks later, a source told Reuters.

This, combined with the fact that Apple employees have had the days between February 3rd and 6th blocked for vacation requests leads me to believe that the iPhone will be launched on Verizon on February 3rd.

Why is Verizon Announcing the iPhone, Not Apple?

Some naysayers have been hooting on about the fact that it couldn’t be an iPhone announcement because Apple isn’t doing it themselves, as they are normally very protective of product announcements and do them in a very Apple way. However, they’re overlooking that this is in fact not a new product. It’s an existing product with a slight modification to make it work on another carrier, in this case the adding of a CDMA radio to make it compatible with the Verizon network. Remember that the iPhone has been rolled out on carrier after carrier internationally throughout the summer without much fanfare beyond a press release.

Here’s more food for thought. This is the first time that the iPhone will be available on more than one carrier in the US. This puts Apple in the kind of position that they’re in in the UK and many other countries. That of a carrier-agnostic hardware manufacturer rather than the traditional one-carrier-man stance that they’ve taken so far in the states. This makes it likely that Apple is letting Verizon announce the iPhone themselves not just because it’s not a ‘real’ product announcement but because it allows them to participate as a hardware partner to both carriers without positioning themselves in opposition to AT&T.

Can I Use My AT&T iPhone on Verizon?

No, you must purchase a new iPhone if you plan on moving to Verizon. The Verizon network utilizes a CDMA standard which requires a different internal radio to communicate with it’s network. The CDMA standard does not use the GSM SIM card arrangement that AT&T uses. You will have to purchase a new device if you switch to Verizon.

Will the Verizon iPhone be LTE?

The LTE standard, also known as ‘Verizon 4G’ is a newer, faster connection that will allow much speedier download and upload speeds from your mobile devices. The Verizon keynote at CES this year hyped the 4G LTE network quite a bit, but Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg stated during the presentation that LTE is still only available in 38 major markets and will only double over the next 18 months. This means that we won’t be seeing an LTE iPhone in 2011, perhaps not even in 2012. There’s no reason to launch the iPhone on a network that covers less than half of major american cities.

What Will it Cost me to Switch to Verizon from AT&T?

It depends largely upon how long you’ve been under your current contract with AT&T. If you’re a new iPhone owner on AT&T for instance you face a newly increased early termination fee of $325 on top of the purchase of a new device on Verizon, likely $199 and $299 depending on capacity, the same as the AT&T models. In addition there is likely a ‘new subscription’ fee of $15 or so with Verizon. So not including your new plan on Verizon, you’re looking at roughly $540-$640 to switch one iPhone user from AT&T to Verizon. The ETF does prorate, which means that it will go down $10 monthly for as many months as you’ve been under contract. So if you’ve been under contract for 7 months (since the iPhone 4 was released) your ETF would be $255, making your upgrade costs $470-$570. If you’re no longer under contract with AT&T the pricing will likely be just the new hardware costs and the new plan.

What Will it Cost me to Upgrade?

If you’re already a Verizon customer and you’d like to upgrade it’s generally thought at this time that you’ll be able to upgrade for the lower, subsidized, $199 and $299 price for the 16GB and 32GB models of iPhone 4 as long as you’re eligible for upgrade. Non upgrade prices for Verizon are unknown at this point although if you go off of the unsubsidized pricing on AT&T you’re looking at $499 and $599 if you’re ineligible for an upgrade.

What are the Verizon iPhone Plans Like?

Plans have not yet been announced but the WSJ has once again cited sources that say that the $30 unlimited data plan, the one no longer offered by AT&T, will stick around for the iPhone on Verizon, at least for now. Remember that Verizon has long supported limited, tiered data plans similar to AT&T’s current offerings and is likely only keeping the unlimited plan around for now to get an edge over AT&T’s offering for the iPhone 4.

If you go off of the current plan offerings for smartphones, you’re likely to pay $80 for 450 talk minutes, 500 SMS messages, unlimited data, unlimited nights and weekends, free long distance and free mobile-to-mobile on Verizon in addition to free calling to ‘5 friends’ that can include people on other networks. Appleinsider has a good breakdown of the plan costs and put together this infographic that you can use to compare the costs of plans:

It’s also notable enough to mention, to those whom it applies, that Verizon currently charges users that use Exchange accounts on their smartphones an additional $15/month for access.

Will the iPhone Perform Better on Verizon than AT&T?

This is the million-dollar question isn’t it? iPhone users have had 4 years at this point to complain about the iPhone’s data performance on AT&T’s network with no ability to compare it to the performance of another network with the same phone in the US. It’s honestly been my belief for a while now that Verizon’s network will suffer from the ‘iPhone effect’ just as AT&T has. That’s the effect of millions of new users eating up data at a monstrous rate due to the phone’s easy web browsing and many internet-connected apps, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of apps that will get downloaded every day as new iPhone users discover the 500k apps available on the iOS App Store.

It remains to be seen how badly the iPhone will affect the stability and speeds of Verizon’s network but I just don’t believe that it’s going to be some miraculously faster and better experience data-wise. I can tell you that the quality and coverage of service is basically a toss-up between the two carriers. One major difference between the two is that AT&T’s GSM/UMTS service enables users to roam globally on international carriers, although it’s quite expensive.

Verizon generally has a much broader 3G coverage area especially in rural markets and some cities. Their coverage over Californias central coast for instance is easily double what AT&T’s is. However, AT&T’s data speeds easily outstrip Verizon’s in well-covered areas like major cities and metropolitan markets.

If you’re looking for one kicker that really sucks about Verizon’s service it would probably be the simultaneous voice and data usage problem. AT&T’s UMTS service supports simultaneous voice and data use, allowing you to be on a voice call and still use the data connection of your phone to browse the web, look up directions etc. This is unlike Verizon, where you don’t get any data push notifications, can’t browse the web or retrieve emails while you’re on a call.