Consistent Investment

Melone credits the company's reputation to a focus on high network standards backed by consistent investments and a sophisticated troubleshooting program. Over the last three years, the company has invested nearly $19 billion in its wireless network, or about $6.3 billion a year. "It comes down to backing that process with money," says Melone. "We've been more consistent than any carrier in the last 10 years investing year over year."

Verizon Wireless has also beefed up its network though acquisitions. In January 2009, Verizon Wireless closed a $27 billion deal to purchase the rural cellular operator Alltel. In acquiring Alltel, Verizon picked up a nationwide network with strong coverage in the Southeast and in Western states such as California, Nevada, and Arizona.

In addition, Verizon runs a troubleshooting program that helps the company identify weak spots in its network. Today, Verizon operates 100 vehicles in which technicians literally drive on roads throughout the country testing the service of their own devices as well as devices of their rivals. That's up from 10 vehicles a decade ago. If techies find an area that has weak service, the company can target more investment to improve the quality of the phone call or the data download. "We understand very granularly where our network performs well and where it doesn't perform well," says Melone. "That's served us well, quite frankly."

In fairness, the iPhone does seem to be imposing exceptional demands on AT&T. In the two years since the iPhone's debut, data traffic on AT&T's network has soared 5,000%. By contrast, Melone says Verizon's traffic has also been growing rapidly but at a slower pace. When asked to specify the growth rate, Melone said that over the last three years Verizon's traffic has grown as high as 1,000% year over year. But he declined to provide more details. Even so, Melone says the company is ready for the deluge should Verizon Wireless land a deal with Apple for the iPhone. "We will handle it if we ever get it," says Melone.

Verizon Wireless believes it will be able to maintain its edge in network quality as the industry moves to so-called fourth-generation wireless technology. Such technology will let consumers download anywhere from 5 to 12 megabytes per second, up from about 1.5 currently. Next year, Verizon plans to roll out the technology in 30 of the most populated markets, finishing the nationwide rollout two years later. Verizon's early deployments will be focused on modems and wireless access cards for laptops. 4G handsets aren't expected to be widely 2011