A recent survey by ChangeWave Research has revealed that though Verizon and AT&T offer almost equally efficient services, Verizon drops fewer calls as compared to AT&T. The survey conducted among 4,068 people reported that the “very satisfied” subscribers amount to 82 % in case of Verizon and 80% in case of AT&T, which means that the overall satisfaction rates with the two companies are “virtually indistinguishable”.  However, there was a significant difference in the reported percentage of dropped calls by the two companies. While the Verizon subscribers reported a 1.8 percent dropped call rate on the iPhone 4, AT&T landed at 4.8 percent. According to ChangeWave Research, this difference is coherent with the historical patterns of overall industry findings.

However, compared to AT&T, Verizon is in the early days of offering the iPhone 4 and therefore, nothing can be said about the end results. ChangeWave, moreover, declared that of the future iPhone customers, 46 percent will opt for Verizon and 27% will opt for AT&T. This indicates that Verizon is going to experience larger magnitude of subscribers in the near future which will be a test for it to prove the validity of its “lesser dropped calls” tag under pressure.

ChangeWave has been tracking dropped-call rates on the four U.S. wireless for several years and since 2008, when ChangeWave started tracking the dropped calls phenomenon, Verizon has outperformed AT&T.  Its latest data finds that Verizon is at number one with a 1.4 percent dropped-call rate, followed by T-Mobile at 2.3 percent, Sprint at 2.7 percent, and AT&T at 4.6 percent.In December 2010, AT&T improved significantly, dropping from 6 percent in September to 4.7 percent in December. The fact that Verizon is at its lowest rate ever and that its all-time high dropped-call rate was 2.7 percent in September 2008 definitely forecasts higher Verizon subscribers in the coming years.