Verizon Wireless Confirms Plans to Throttle Heaviest Users

I think I can help answer some of these concerns for you, pretty easily.

1) The iPhone 5 has yet to be announced publicly and so, while educated consumers can definitely see the pattern that one will likely be released this year, there is no evidence or proof, and in todays market you don't sell a consumer on maybe. The other thing to consider is that your average customer is not going to be in a 4g area in June/July, and so will not benefit from the phone. Now, not to say advanced features wont be a benefit, but since we don't know what they are I can't argue that they'll be that much better.

2) The removal of the unlimited data plans has been forseen for a long time and is no new argument. In fact, this argument works in the benefit of not waiting for the iPhone 5, because assuming it does exist, will likely be released without unlimited data. Your hardcore iPhone user would take that into consideration and it would make the iPhone 4 launch a much more ideal selling point to take advantage of, especially if they're going to be on the tail end of the 4g service upgrade.

3) This is an unfair question to ask your average Verizon Wireless rep. That's like asking if the Droid X "might" have dropped calls. The only thing I can answer to that concern is you will note the cosmetic design of Verizon's iPhone 4 is slightly altered, which to my understanding was done in order to resolve the dropped call issue. If that works or not we'll see when the phone launches nationwide.

To answer your question, if a device has the same issues on two different networks, yes, it's the manufacturer, because even if the network can't support the phone correctly, it is the manufacturer's responsibility to see to it that it can.