Behind the scenes on Verizon's big deal with Apple for the iPhone

TechnoBuffalo's Adriana Lee has an interesting writeup that claims to go behind the scenes on Verizon's big deal with Apple to finally sell the iPhone on a second network earlier this year. Unfortunately, this information comes from an unnamed source, so we can't exactly vouch for its veracity. But it's an interesting tale anyway of what the Verizon deal may have been like.

Apparently security was tight -- only those who needed to know about the deal did so officially beforehand (though, honestly, we'd heard rumor after rumor about it for a long time). And actual handsets were closely guarded, with owners being required to routinely put a special code in to guarantee things hadn't leaked out.

The post also talks about the mood at CES about the "VPhone." I was at CES this year, and I can at least agree to the authenticity of that part -- the buzz around the press rooms and show floor was that it was pretty silly that Verizon was still playing dumb about an iPhone release, and when the invites finally appeared in the middle of the busiest tech show of the year, the response was more a sigh than anything. "Really?," we all asked. "Now?"

Of course, that release plan worked out just fine anyway. The launch turned out to be more than a solid effort, and while lots of the buzz was undoubtedly due to the actual iPhone itself, Verizon seemed to handle things well on its side also.

Thanks, Sean!