Competition is always good for the end user. Essentially, if companies need to fight for market share, prices come down, perquisites are increased and, at the end, the user has to sit back and decide who wins the corporate showdown. 

Of course, that is the ideal scenario. There are times where reputed companies take unnecessary pot shots at each other. For example, there was the incident of AT&T rap sheet on Palm Pre. Granted that the memo was meant for AT&T personnel only, it was still below the belt. 

However, all such shenanigans of telecommunications service providers tend to be lively and rather amusing. This time around, AT&T has been at the receiving end of Verizon’s comedic taunts. 

Everyone knows Apple’s iPhone cutesy tag line, “There’s an app for that”. Verizon has cleverly done a take on the tag line saying succinctly, “There’s a map for that”.

The commercial starts off with a guy strolling through a college campus using his smartphone to access 3G. Apparently, if he wonders ‘why the 3G coverage works so well on the Verizon wireless’, a voice-over tells him there’s a map for that while a map of the US hovers over his head, almost fully covered in red. After another example of the exemplary 3G coverage, the advertisement cuts to a guy holding an iPhone looking mighty disgruntled. He has too has a map of the US hovering near his head, sparsely coloured in blue. There is even a legend which denotes the map as the AT&T 3G coverage.

Verizon categorically declares that it can provide 5 times more coverage for 3G as compared to AT&T. Comments on the video would suggest that this claim is less than accurate, but then again impact and not accuracy is the purpose of an advert like this one.

Unfortunately for AT&T, the timing of this particular blow could not have been worse: AT&T is coming to the end of their exclusivity contract with Apple. To add serious insult to crippling injury, Apple just happens to be in talks with Verizon. With the expiry of AT&T’s stranglehold on the iPhone, sales are expected to double in the US market. The ramifications of that projection point to the obvious conclusion that people are opting out of the iPhone because of AT&T – hardly creditable for a telecommunications provider. 

There was also a rumour that Verizon and AT&T were in a joint venture to release a tablet of some sort. The rumour is obviously not true, considering this latest Verizon escapade. No company would play games with a potential business partner, so that rumour can leave the mills and be buried with the other unsubstantiated garbage that is churned out of the Internet. 

For purely entertainment purposes, hopefully AT&T will retaliate with a take on all things Verizon. After all, the end user can finally be a winner here; there is always hope. 

Click here to view the commercial on YouTube. Ironically, the person who posted the video shot it using an iPhone. Poetic irony? Definitely.