Survey suggests Verizon's iPhone customers more satisfied than AT&T's

A survey of the differences between AT&T and Verizon iPhone customers shows what we knew all along: many AT&T iPhone customers are quite fed up with the phone network.

All the main points in the Mobclix survey of iPhone users (taken in February) reinforce the conclusion:

• The larger and more densely populated the city -- and hence the more overcrowded AT&T's network -- the more likely iPhone users are to have switched to Verizon. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York City and Boston have the highest Verizon iPhone usage.

• AT&T iPhone users resort to Wi-Fi 53% of the time, compared with just 38% for Verizon users. AT&T users do, however, get free automatic access to the company's 24,000 Wi-Fi hotspots included in their subscription.

• The top three reasons cited for switching to Verizon were reception issues, personal Wi-Fi hotspot availability on Verizon (only recently introduced by AT&T) and reputation.

• Most damning of all, a massive two-thirds of those switching from AT&T to Verizon were willing to pay the $325 early termination fee demanded by the iPhone's original network provider.

A full 14% of iPhone 4 users are on the Verizon network now, but adding in users of earlier models brings this down to just 4% of iPhone users on Verizon.

Of course, plenty of AT&T users are happy with the service they get on their iPhone, but it's clear that many couldn't wait for the day they could get an iPhone on Verizon. Perhaps this situation will change in a year or two if iPhone users on AT&T also get access to T-Mobile's network.

Personally, I'm very happy to live in a country (France) where, by law, the iPhone is available on all mobile phone networks, and hence overcrowding simply isn't an issue.

[Via TechCrunch]