After all my complaints about the indignity of using an iPhone on AT&T’s anemic 3G network, you might think I’d be thrilled with the ability to switch to Verizon. If so, you have overestimated my ability to be thrilled by giant, faceless telecommunications companies.

I’ll be switching, all right, just as soon as AT&T’s Gamorrean guards tell me I can depart without leaving behind my face as an early termination fee.

But I harbor no illusions. I know that I’m just transferring to another two-year prison stint. That’s why they call them cellphones.

With any luck my new cell will have an actual toilet instead of a hole in the ground with a grate 3 feet down to keep me in and the CHUDs out, but I’m not expecting Big Rock Candy Telecommunications Corp.

If the business of America is business, then the business of American business is advertising. Installing and maintaining a robust infrastructure that can handle the needs of your customers is expensive. Super Bowl ad time is cheap by comparison. And redefining unlimited to mean limited is free!

So where I might prefer the two iPushers to fight over who can more quickly deliver the location of the nearest Burmese restaurant, instead Verizon and AT&T are engaging in an extended, televised game of the dozens in order to convince me that each has the brightest plumage and silkiest sheets. It irritates me to the point of mixing metaphors.

So far Verizon has launched the predictable “Hear Me Now” Guy ad. AT&T has pointed out that you can talk and transfer data at the same time on its network.

Verizon’s obvious next move is to point out that in order to do two things at once, you need to be able to do either of them independently. It’s nice to own a convertible but not if it has an Easy-Bake Oven for an engine block.

At that point, AT&T is likely to unveil its new campaign, “I Know You Are: But What Am I?” Verizon will then respond with the slogan, “I’m Rubber and You’re Glue, Whatever You Advertise in National Media Bounces Off of Me and Sticks to You.” Unfortunately for Verizon, at that point its stock will plunge as investors wonder whether the public is ready for a rubber cellphone.

I expect that by 2013 the war of words will devolve into “Stop Copying Me” followed by “Stop Copying Me” only in a sneery voice, followed by “I Mean It” and so forth.

I’m hoping that by then WiMax will have been deployed, commandeered by open source extremists, and improved 10-fold, and I can look forward to the day when someone else’s grandchildren will ask, “Random Old Person, what’s a ‘phone’?” and I can respond, “Now, that’s a serious and complex matter for such young folks,” and they’ll say, “Screw you right in your meter-long beard, mossback, we’ve been genetically engineered to understand linear algebra by age 6. The only reason we’re even talking to you instead of looking it up on the StallmanNet is because of the emotion you call pity.”

And then I’ll realize that some small part of me misses those days, the savage, wild, heavily regulated days of corporate telecommunications. I’ll look up at the sun streaming through the nanofactured bio-cumulus and whisper, “Yes, weird nerdy Verizon guy, I can hear you now.”

And then I’ll be beaten to death by a horrified crowd for uttering the Forbidden Credo.

Illustration: Chris Hallbeck

- – -

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to spend too much time coming up with the links for this article to make up a cute tag line.

See Also: